[jandrese]

Are there any 1-1 fiat stablecoins that aren't just flat out lies? Like every new crypto coin minted requires a matching real dollar to be stashed away. My impression is that nobody does this because it would mean massive waits to buy the crypto coins when the real dollars run low and because the way to make real money is with leverage.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

Since Gemini is actually compliant - I imagine GUSD is close.

It's only ~$0.2B of a ~$160B market, though.

[gringoDan]

USDC is legit: https://www.centre.io/usdc-transparency

[ceejayoz]

Tether has attestations, too. They're not audits; Tether got caught moving money in right before an attestation check, and moving it out right after.

https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-...

> In the face of persistent questions about whether the company actually held sufficient funds, Tether published a self-proclaimed ‘verification’ of its cash reserves, in 2017, that it characterized as “a good faith effort on our behalf to provide an interim analysis of our cash position.” In reality, however, the cash ostensibly backing tethers had only been placed in Tether’s account as of the very morning of the company’s ‘verification.’

> On November 1, 2018, Tether publicized another self-proclaimed ‘verification’ of its cash reserve; this time at Deltec Bank & Trust Ltd. of the Bahamas. The announcement linked to a letter dated November 1, 2018, which stated that tethers were fully backed by cash, at one dollar for every one tether. However, the very next day, on November 2, 2018, Tether began to transfer funds out of its account, ultimately moving hundreds of millions of dollars from Tether’s bank accounts to Bitfinex’s accounts. And so, as of November 2, 2018 — one day after their latest ‘verification’ — tethers were again no longer backed one-to-one by U.S. dollars in a Tether bank account.

An attestation tells you what the bank balance is. An audit tells you where it comes from, who has claim on it, etc.

[stickfigure]

The difference is that USDC is run by a US-based public corporation and its managers are US citizens that live in the US. If USDC is a fraud (or even just materially misrepresented), they go to jail.

Is that a guarantee? No, but I don't understand why anyone would use USDT instead of USDC.

[edit: s/UST/USDT]

[ceejayoz]

Maybe! First, they have to get caught; Bernie Madoff managed to run his ponzi for decades, running the value up to $65B. Jail for misrepresentation is pretty rare; IIRC only one person in the entire 2009 financial crisis wound up with jail time.

> No, but I don't understand why anyone would use UST instead of USDC.

That's fair, I just don't understand using either.

[jandrese]

Only one person in the US. He was sentenced for two and half years, about half a year less than the average US jail sentence for selling pot. Other countries, especially Iceland, actually did crack down on their bankers.

[rapsey]

Current market cap is 52 billion. Just where is that money?

[scrlk]

Apparently with BlackRock and BNY Mellon: https://decrypt.co/97795/blackrock-handle-circle-usdc-cash-r...

[koolba]

With treasuries paying 1.6% x $50B, that’s $66M per month of interest.

[thebean11]

Held by Circle and Coinbase in T bills I believe.

edit: more likely held by some holding company controlled by those two companies.

[dereg]

USDC.