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Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

It appears from the link in the settlement agreement:

https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2021.02.17_-_settlemen...

Tether wasn’t backed at all times. The argument was that this happened due to asset seizures in Poland and Portugal in 2017-2018.

https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/95207/bitfinex-tether-ne...

Seems to me they couldn’t prove malicious intent, so they suggested they stop trading. Frankly this seems a bit of a click-bait title with the whole “illegal activities”.

Sure, tether wasn’t backed at all times (probably is now), due to governments seizing their funds. Also banks do this all the time, every time they issue a loan for instance. The bank only keeps 10-30% collateral on your home.

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> (probably is now)

This kind of argumentation makes cryptocurrency proponents so insufferable. There’s no evidence Tether is backed, but somehow we can just assume in a parenthesis that they probably are, and then go on a tangential rant about banks or fiat or digital gold or something.

Exactly.

We've traded confidence in centralized, old world financial institutions, for decentralized, techno-utopian...financial institutions.

Same s**, different marketing.

At least banks have to operate within the realities of regulations and legal recourse. It’s not perfect, but it does provide a forcing function to make them think long and hard before doing anything that might be fraudulent.

Cryptocurrency proponents like to tout crypto’s ability to escape regulation as a good thing, while ignoring that the same property makes it a dream come true for financial fraud schemes.

Nothing about Tether or Bitfinex is decentralized.

> makes cryptocurrency proponents so insufferable

Tether is not a cryptocurrency.

It's a cargo cult: A plain old centralized system which got the word "cryptocurrency" slapped onto it to attract dumb money.

That is beside the point: "(probably now)" is an entirely fanciful and blatantly self-serving attempt by a cryptocoin proponent to avoid the very real problem Tether poses for Bitcoin.

Tether is Tether. Bitcoin is Bitcoin. The fact that exchanges exist which allow you to trade one for the other does not make them the same kind of thing.

No one would care how many Bitcoin they had without an exchange rate.

Tether printing is a convenient way to inflate the exchange rate. Remove Tether printing and the exchange rate falls.

As long as people talk about Bitcoin in terms of the exchange rate, Tether and Bitcoin are deeply connected.

No it would not, plenty of stablecoins to take it's place, or just crypto/crypto ratios.

That assumes that Tether is being honest and not printing unbacked coins to drive the price up.

So, no, it would still tank the price, because the price is quite likely inflated through fraud.

Let's not ignore major funds and companies investing in BTC like crazy, that's what is propping up the price not the "Tether scam" that's being going on for 5 years unproven.

If I could buy tulips on cryptoexchanges with freshly printed Tether, I could bid the price of tulips up. If the majority of tulip trades took place on crypto exchanges and much of that was bidding the price up with newly printed Tether, tulips would be exactly as useful as before, but cost a lot more. As such, if Tether were to collapse, people's bulbs would be worth a lot less. Tulips would still be tulips, but they'd be part of a Tether bubble.

Remind me, what percentage of Bitcoin trades happens in Tether, again?

Seems logical they would given the investigations and the reason they supposedly didn’t have the funds at the time. I don’t think tether is necessary or a good idea, simply stating what I see.

Frankly, the AG admitted it was backed, just not “the entire time”.

> Frankly, the AG admitted it was backed, just not “the entire time”.

The AG did not. Certainly not completely, nor to the extent that Tether claims that it is. The AG merely acknowledged that Tether had some portion of the funds it claimed to.

>This kind of argumentation makes cryptocurrency proponents so insufferable. There’s no evidence Tether is backed, but somehow we can just assume in a parenthesis that they probably are, and then go on a tangential rant about banks or fiat or digital gold or something.

Ah yes, because all cryptocurrency proponents are pro-tether.

The comment you're responding to isn't implying they are. It's implying a larger issue: that claims are often made by cryptocurrency proponents without any evidence to back them.

You can take redemption from tether and they will wire you the money, they are in fact registered and regulated. on several exchanges it can be exchanged into fiat, for smaller participant.s

It would collapse a long time ago, if it weren't backed.

Heh. I just made another comment saying that Tether is not like Madoff, so of course I now need to make one comparing Tether to Madoff.

Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities was also registered and regulated, and also had to wire people their money when asked. Even though they didn't actually have all the assets they said they did. He was able to keep it up for 3 or 4 decades.

It will only collapse if outflows exceed inflows for long enough to deplete their supply of assets. Which is something that is unlikely to happen for as long as this Bitcoin rocket keeps racing toward the moon.

Was Madoff also subpoenaed by the NYAG who investigated and announced there was no fraud and settled for a trivial amount?

I've tried, six months on they are still stringing me along saying we'll get back to you.

As far as I know tether only allowed a few crypto "king makers" to redeem tether, and even then, only at a very small scale.

Several exchanges list USDT/USD pair.

"A market currently exists, is currently liquid, and currently trades 1 USDT:1 USD" is not a universal truth that will hold in perpetuity.

You very specifically claimed "You can take redemption from tether and they will wire you the money".

There is no evidence that this is the case. Tether sure doesn't offer such a service openly.

1. https://tether.to/fees/

2. https://tether.to/redeem-tethers-to-bank-account/

That isn't a redemption.

Redemption means I give the tether corporation some tether and they burn that tether and hand me back USD.

> You can take redemption from tether and they will wire you the money

Tether says they will. Has anyone successfully done this?

> on several exchanges it can be exchanged into fiat, for smaller participant.s

No one says you can't trade USDT. But that requires a counterparty, and if it turns out that Tether is mostly backed by air they may evaporate as well.

That’s usually the way these things work. That’s why the AG is making statements like “stop the illegal activity” and stuff, it degrades trust. However, if you read the statement it’s a win for the crypto exchange. Only an $18m fine for supposedly “billions in fraud” (course if you read deeper, they found no fraud).

I'm surprised that you read a settlement narrowly focused on activities in 2017-2018 and apply it to today.

Tether was nearing a lifetime market cap of two billion when investigated. Their "100% backed!" claim at two billion turned out to be 13.8% backed.

They printed two billion USDT over the course of six days earlier this month. Wonder how backed that is.

Please name the regulators you think have verified Tether's backing. And once you've listed them, please explain why even though they missed the specific points at which the NYAG has proved Tether was not fully backed, you still think they can be trusted.

(I ask only for my own entertainment, of course. If Tether were actually backed, they'd publish regular third-party audits from a responsible accountant. Anybody thinking it's backed is a fantasist that could make Baron Munchausen seem resonable.)

> Sure, tether wasn’t backed at all times (probably is now),

Even Tether admitted that they weren’t backed by funds, and that was before they printed most of their current supply: https://www.coindesk.com/tether-lawyer-confirms-stablecoin-7...

I don’t understand why anyone would be in a rush to take them at their word when every new piece of evidence demonstrates that Tether’s operators are not interested in behaving honestly.

> Also banks do this all the time, every time they issue a loan for instance. The bank only keeps 10-30% collateral on your home.

Fractional reserve banking doesn’t mean banks can simply print more money than they have on the books.

Regardless, if a bank loses funds due to fraud or government intervention or whatever, they can’t simply continue pretending they had the money all along.

I don’t understand the desire to pretend that what Tether is doing is normal or good for the crypto community. It’s not.

I think it has a pretty simple explanation. The crypto community started with a few dedicated idealists. But it quickly attracted loons, fantasists, scammers, and get-rich-quick dreamers, along with some reasonable people interested in the hype.

Over time, as the space has produced almost no actual utility and generated billions in theft, fraud, and losses, the reasonable people generally got out, often with fingers burned. A few idealists remain. But by now the dominant group are the people low on sense and scruples who are hoping to Make Money Fast, so anything that keeps the industry aloft is great by them.

That's how bubbles work, alas. The dot-com bubble was less extreme, but still at the end there was all sorts chicanery that made no sense to a vaguely rational actor. We saw it again in the mortgage bubble. There was one bank CEO who stayed out of the more dubious mortgages; when questioned, he said, "If something grows too fast, it's a weed." But there were plenty of hucksters saying that everything was normal and good.

The good news is that bubbles eventually pop. I loved the post dot-com bubble period! Most of the MBA-holding locusts who had rushed in went away again. I hope the people truly interested in digital financial innovation enjoy a similar period of quiet soon.

> so anything that keeps the industry aloft is great by them.

Bingo. Tether being less than 100% backed isn't a surprise. Heck, they've admitted it publicly for over a year now - this is, however, the first time we've seen how big the gap truly is.

But the peg is still holding, which means that

1) the market had already priced in the risk of USDT being 14% rather than 100% backed, or

2) the market for USD:USDT is not rational.

The issue is that if it isn’t backed they can print more at any time. But they claim it is backed to avoid inflation devaluation of the currency. Banks are not lower to print currency but tether can at any time. The potential for fraud sufrounding tether is huge and no one is checking over them. Do you trust them? They are already known for lying. This is why banking regulations exist.

> The issue is that if it isn’t backed they can print more at any time.

That’s how all banking works. China, for instance, never even publish how much money they click into existence.

Not saying it’s correct, just explaining how the system really works. They really do “create” money. Even synthetic shares are created on the stock market (largely when creating ETF blocks), see “naked shorts”. It happens all the time.

Here’s an explanation on how banking & interest work in a digestible way: http://anuparty.org/on-interest-slavery/

Tether isn't a bank. It's a stable coin supposed to be backed by real dollars. But that's of course not the case in practice.

If they're backed then they can prove it with an audit. Considering their last auditor told them to kick rocks, I'm highly skeptical.

I thought it hilarious that 1) Bitfinex/Tether (when they were still pretending they were two completely unrelated entities, remember that?) thought that handing an auditor the front summary page of a bank account would be sufficient to 'verify holdings', and 2) when they told the public they had another audit done, but were unable to release it because it would be in Mandarin...

> probably is now

Here are the facts we know about Tether being backed:

1. They used to say they were backed 1 to 1 by cash.

2. This was a direct lie.

3. They now say they are backed 1 to 1 by cash and "cash equivalents", not otherwise specified.

Which one of these facts is it that you are basing your claim that they "probably are now" on?

3. "... while printing multiple billions a week."

> Sure, tether wasn’t backed at all times (probably is now), due to governments seizing their funds. Also banks do this all the time, every time they issue a loan for instance. The bank only keeps 10-30% collateral on your home.

Exactly. Tether has made no claims about the quality of the collateral they use to back Tethers, so they can probably get away with some very questionable accounting. Anyone who actually has skin in the game understands this about Tether. If you want to take the risk, go right ahead. I've traded at least $50M in notional volume over the past 3 years and never, not once, have I touched Tether.

You’re ignoring the systemic issues that come from having Tether printing drive the price action.

You may not have touched Tether, but Tether’s influence on asset prices can’t be understated. You are at risk by trading assets that are inflated by Tether.

These things aren’t uncoupled.

The entire point of the tether was that it was backed 1:1 by US Dollars. Later they asserted that it was 0.75:1.

The bank doesn't lie about it's capitalization.

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