I don't want to promote tether and I have never touched it myself, but when it seems to be working and liquid for many exchanged world-wide, your statements seem a little bit off. Tether may be having shitloads of issues but according to market data the issues haven't hit the end-user and the USD peg yet.
If you believe that a company without access to banking actually has 2.8B USD available for disbursement, then you are more optimistic than I am.
The US authorities have literally shown in court they have vast sums backing tethers. Bifinex itself is a money printing machine.
I'd love to take some serious 5 figure wagers with the people who say this stuff. Because they've been saying it for years now and have been consistently proven wrong.
Everything old is new again.
They a supposedly pinned to the dollar, so there isn't much point in holding them hoping they will gain in value. If anything their peg is questionable so they are only likely to decrease in value.
As far as I can see their only purpose is a a way of transferring between other crypto currencies and exchanges, but you would only ever need the tethers very short term while you completed the movement or transaction.
Of course you’re trading one set of liabilities and legal ramifications for a whole new set. Plus a hell of a lot of counter party risk.
It sure seems like they would like to just have people trade them on an exchange.
Banks are always a huge risk when you deal with crypto. They can freeze your funds anytime.
You need to be on regulators side or they'll attack you on the bank accounts.
That means full compliance with KYC/AML and so on.
At this point, I wouldn't recommend going near any of the current cryptocurrencies, for any use.
Also it seems like "illegally traded" just means that NY companies set up foreign shell companies to skirt NY regulations? I don't see how this is iFinex's fault either tbh
...as long as they don't want to have USD denominated bank accounts, or transact with USD, or do business with people with USD denominated bank accounts. Which, of course, they do. If you touch the US financial system in any way, or if any of your counterparties do, or if your counterparties want to have other counterparties that do, then you need to care deeply about what the US federal government and the NY state government think.
That is pretty solidly doing business in New York.
They could simply arrest employees, freeze their assets, and charge them with crimes. Then freeze assets and charge banks that did business with them, similar for investors.
If it wasn't a company largely run by and for Americans living in New York it would be a different story.
https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewDocument?docInde...
If you are getting into the space now USDC is an audited stablecoin backed by Coinbase and Circle which has the second highest issuance after Tether. Most likely you would prefer USDC over tether.
I will disclose that I know way more about this industry than all of you commenting that I'm "shilling" as if this is some altcoin scam. Welcome to crypto
Why would that make his opinion any less bias based? Most opinions tend to be like that.
Is there any specific opinion in his comment you object to?
I've dissected the comment below, it should be easy to point out the specific part that bothers you.
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Opinions where the employer seems completely irrelevant:
> USDT has a strong following in APAC countries
> Also for some crypto users part of its allure is that it’s vaguely sketchy - it means they are less likely to have their funds blacklisted,
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Simple statements of fact:
>a feature which Tether maintains the ability to do but has never enforced as far as I’m aware
>USDC is an audited stablecoin backed by Coinbase and Circle which has the second highest issuance after Tether
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A possibly biased opinion, (But really just a fact, USDC is far less likely to disappear overnight than USDT. Anyone familiar with both will agree.)
>Most likely you would prefer USDC over tether.
What does that mean?
That doesn't sound like a positive thing.
Sketchy is a generous characterization of tether. Tether is fraudulent.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-26/things...
In contrast, I don't see a worthy reason to sell US dollars for any stablecoin.
You can park it outside the crypto market, ready to buy back into crypto at any moment.
If FUD scares you then crypto trading is not for you
And you need to do all that in every jurisdiction you touch, plus likely the US even if you don’t touch it.
Plenty of people promote their own work on HN as it’s their area of expertise.
But crypto has some baggage attached so people get sensitive.
The irony in this sentence should given even the most hardened USDT fan something to think about
This doesn't stop US persons from trading on the exchanges, and self reporting accurately to the IRS/SEC, which may do.
Seems to be 0.25%/0.35%
As I said I haven't used tether and highly probably will never use it - I don't have any use case, bitcoin is enough for me. However if I had some use-case for moderate amount and months of timespan, I would probably use it (depending of course on other alternatives - AFAIK USDT is de facto "USD coin" on many exchanges).
Their CEO literally tried to start a ponzi scheme right before he kicked off Tether haha (https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@binyamin/bitfinex-s-founder-see...) and you trust these people that they're just plain sitting on BILLIONS of dollars?
You know what they say, first you go broke slowly, then all at once.
HSBC seems like a fine choice no?
I'm just saying that tether has
worked for years, and the peg
seems to be still there.
And if it's a parachute, what happens when someone pulls the ripcord is kinda the most important thing :)
But traditionally in finance, when things go wrong everything is fine for a few years then everyone loses all their money.
Are you serious? You need to establish presence at an exchange meaning you need to scan and send your ID to a company which more likely than not -- does QuadrigaCX ring a bell -- is run by scammers. Then you need to buy bitcoin and store it somewhere... and then send it to someone. The sending costs an unknown amount, takes an unknwon amount of time, the receiver gets something but none of you can predict how much that is actually worth by the time they receive it. If they want to do something with it they need to go through the exchange rigmarole. And you call this very easy to use.
Bitcoin was, is always will be nothing more than a novel scam. It's not a Ponzi... it's a novel form of scam. https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/
You only need to hold Bitcoin for ~1 hour total in the entire process. You can avoid making international wires by using domestic payment systems on each end of the transaction. If you do some research, you may be able to move money across borders and actually make a small profit of 3-4%, depending on the sending / receiving currency.
All said and done, Bitcoin allows people to have much greater control of their money. It is very useful for moving money between countries without subjecting yourself to the wait times and high fees associated with cross-border transactions.
This is a downright lie.
>the receiver gets something but none of you can predict how much that is actually worth by the time they receive it
This is just misleading, the recipient gains control of the transmitted bitcoin almost instantly. Confirmation delays are known.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/sep/21/is-money-la...
The real narcos and kleptocrats don't bother with Bitcoin, that's for small fry.
If the exchange was overseas/super sketchy it's possible that the exchange just plain stole some of his money and claimed it was "for taxes."
And you accept all the associated risk rather than fully cashing out to real dollars because your jurisdiction doesn't treat crypto to crypto purchase as a taxable event?
Interesting. Thank you.
In the US trading crypto to crypto has tax liabilities.
Or, more accurately, just because you record the ownership of an asset on a blockchain doesn't mean you're allowed to violate the law.
Whether this is the case with crypto currencies is all dependent on how your particular jurisdiction has chosen to classify crypto. Or often just your best guess if your particular jurisdiction hasn't been clear on the classification as many haven't.
I bet there's still plenty of people using this for tax purposes, either misguidingly for tax avoidance or explicitly for tax evasion.
You realize a profit or loss every time you transact, and that's a taxable event. It's not tied to whether or not the transaction is into or out of fiat currency.
> The sending costs an unknown amount
Here's you can see historic daily average Bitcoin transaction fees both in dollars per transaction and in satoshis per byte https://bitcoinfees.info/
> takes an unknwon amount of time
Here's the average time for one confirmation: https://coincentral.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Screensho... here
> This is just misleading,
But it's not, there's a time delay between when you initiate exchanging your real money to scam money and the receiver finishes the exchange back and during that time bitcoin can move in any direction.
>But it's not, there's a time delay between when you initiate exchanging your real money to scam money and the receiver finishes the exchange back and during that time bitcoin can move in any direction
Well yes, but this is known beforehand. There are many mechanisms you could use to hedge your risk here.
Do you even hear yourself? We started from very easy to use and now we are at hedging strategies...
One of the most common advertised applications for tether is arbitrage between exchanges. There it hardly matters whether tether has 100% reserves, what matters if the peg stays within the days that you are doing the arbitrage (buying tether from one exchange, transfering to other, selling it).
Yes, but doesn't Tether promise that they back each coin with a dollar? I would care very much if I found out that the issuing party is lying.
Fractional reserve banks' deposits are backed more than 100% with more or less liquid assets. That's why nobody cares if a bank does fractional reserve. With tether there is no reason to believe there is even close to 100% backing. Unless you count as a reason an unverified claim that they are backed.
What's more liquid than cash itself?
I also have an hard time it's backed with MORE value and whether that value is fictional or not. The 2008 crash has shown that it wasn't actually backed by much.
Banks are insured, and in general they haven't failed for the last like 100+ years.
I do think what you are saying about usdt is mostly true though, however if(when) usdt does fail the entire market will take a dive off a cliff. So even if your assets are in other cryptos it still represents a systemic risk to the entire system.
Thanks to massive bailouts you mean?
Not sure what you're trying to say here, given Bear Stearns and Lehman just failed ~11yrs ago, and the entire banking system would have imploded if not for trillions in Fed lending support and govt stimulus.
The only market on Augur right now for USDT is the following one: https://predictions.global/augur-markets/will-tether-usdt-tr...
There's no liquidity though, which is a problem obviously.
I was merely objecting to your false claims. Bitcoin & co. have enough problems as is, there’s no need to invent imaginary ones.
Any bank with assets worth less than liabilities is bankrupt. You may not believe it, but regulators that allow bank to operate and any one holding bank equity with stock price above zero believes that bank's assets are worth more than liabilities.
There you are right that it is possible that tje value of the bank's assets may decline fast, but normally the assets exceed deposits quite significantly as deposits are amongst the highest priorities, so other liabilities (senior debt and equity) act as buffers as well.
