pshan

I think the general internet user doesn't actually do this. Slightly different use case but I worked at maximizing revenue/customer lifetime value at a streaming company and the biggest revenue win project I worked on was just preselecting the most expensive plan.

I was surprised since I usually do research and stuff on the options. But it turns out a lot of people just click next until they can start watching some tv.

WHOIS information for the domain shows it's registered in the Philippines. The name of the owner does not show up in any of the about section people. So I think those are fake.

I think they're just using the link. When I went to uni we used that website for our Putnam elective.

The business is good because of the high amount of leverage they have in those T-bills and money markets since those deposits are liabilities on the balance sheet. The actual return they make on the money the owners put into the business is probably great.

Based on the Q2 2025 attestation [1] it looks like they have about 162B in assets and 157B in liabilities which leaves ~5B in shareholder equity. Even if they hold most of those assets in treasuries, they probably have an egregiously high return on shareholder equity.

(Fun fact: I think this puts their leverage ratio as high as banks during the 2008 GFC. But treasuries should theoretically be safer than subprime mortgage loans).

Equities would give a higher return on average, they don't really work when the liabilities can get called at any time. Tether has to be able to produce money for people exchanging their tether.

If you were in their position and I gave you 150 billion dollars on the condition that I can withdraw that 150 billion dollars at any time. You'd probably also park it in a short-term money market fund. If you put it in equities and it dropped 1%, you'd be on the hook for 1.5 billion.

[1] https://tether.io/news/tether-issues-20b-in-usdt-ytd-becomes...

I'm not trying to strawman the opposing side, but I always found it ironic that many of the cryptocurrency proponents I talk to think that starting a business is amazing and innovation is important, but also hate inflation, which encourages those two things.

I was an intern at Amazon in Seattle in 2018 and full-time from 2019-2021. Coffee was definitely free back then although someone had to brew it for the office.

I did it pretty often as it was a nice thing to do and a good way of meeting people who were waiting for the coffee.