[temp]

So even back in 2017, Tether was backed only by a fraction of USD.

>Until September 15, 2017, the only U.S. dollars held by Tether ostensibly backing the approximately 442 million tethers in circulation was the approximately $61 million on deposit at the Bank of Montreal.

Wonder how much of the tether they pumped out through last year has been backed?

[londons_explore]

Nearly none I would guess... Which large company, investment firm or rich individual will wire Tether Inc millions of dollars in return for a promise from a bunch of people that look like arrest warrants will shortly be issued for them...

[BelenusMordred]

Do people here not realise that people give them bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for that in exchange for tethers? If they were only a week late in converting it to USD they'd be up tens of billion in profit this year.

The lack of critical thinking and mindless mob mentality around tether is amusing and has been going on for years now. Proven wrong everytime.[1][2][3]

Even this announcement is dumb politiking that people seem to lap up. Bitfinex has banned US customers since 2017.[4]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14934874

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16252365

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16182423

[4] https://www.coindesk.com/bitfinex-suspends-sale-select-ico-t...

[FireBeyond]

> Do people here not realise that people give them bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for that in exchange for tethers? If they were only a week late in converting it to USD they'd be up tens of billion in profit this year.

So they're speculating to cover their "1:1 Backing!", and relying on BTC still being hyped, like they said all along?

No, wait, hang on. They were the ones who said they received 1:1 USD inflow for each and every Tether printed.

Now you're like "mindless mob mentality!" while fully admitting that their claims all this were exactly as the mob said.

Tell me, what happens to Tether's ability to create backing out of BTC (or whatever) arbitrage and trading if and when BTC craters again?

> Bitfinex has banned US customers since 2017.

NY is still investigating and believes that Bitfinex has knowingly kept US customers while claiming that they don't.

[bhouston]

And if they used made up tether to buy a bit of extra btc or a lot they would be even further ahead. The easily exploitable opportunities for fraud surrounding tether is huge. Bernie Madoff should be jealous.

[tootahe45]

A 145m sell just sent BTC down 13k. It's not so easy to just sell your ~30b worth of buttcoin.

If anything it's shocking that "we checked and it's all fraud" is seen as a win for crypto.

[graeme]

Where can you find data on sell volumes? This seems very material.