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> "I manage many of their assets," said Lutnick, who brought up crypto in the interview that was streamed live from Davos, Switzerland. "From what I've seen – and we did a lot of work – they have the money they say they have."

That's... not convincing.

BDO Italia attests that Tether has their money. https://tether.to/en/transparency/#reports

The Chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a primary dealer and banking partner for Tether, says Tether has their money.

Deltec bank, a banking partner for Tether, says Tether is fully backed by reserves. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/01/22/tethers-bank-de...

That's not convincing?

If a Wall Street CEO is uncomfortable directly stating that Tether is completely pegged, then I am a bit unconvinced.
Where did he give that impression?
Everything listed in the article is non-committal and specifically worded to avoid making conclusive statements. It's similar to the way a businessperson behaves when they want to avoid legal liability. Read these quotes:

> Does Tether have the money it says it does.

> "They have it," he said during an interview with Bloomberg TV.

That's not a direct reference to the currency being pegged. "the money" and "it" is non-descriptive; it might as well be referring to the advertising fund or the community bingo payout.

> "I manage many of their assets," said Lutnick, who brought up crypto in the interview that was streamed live from Davos, Switzerland. "From what I've seen – and we did a lot of work – they have the money they say they have."

"Many" of their assets says nothing about whether they are pegged. If anything, the fact that he hasn't seen the remaining assets should be alarming to him. The only actual fact that he claimed in the entire article is that "we did a lot of work", which may well be true but has nothing to do with the Tether controversy. The lack of detail or scrutiny should alarm any diligent investor familiar with tradfin scams.

So get a top 10 audit firm to confirm it?
That's what the attestation is. BDO, a top 5 accounting network, confirms that Tether has the assets they claim to have.
I've been in the cryptocurrency-space since 2012. If anybody (back then) ever traded you a popular website's monthly membership for "just 1BTC"... thank you.

>That's... not convincing.

Tether is a toxic creation within the cryptomarketcap, similar (metaphorically) in nature to how [some] hedge funds [can] use dark pools to make non-public trades, ensure public fund liquidity, obscure equitability, lie, cheat, steal; etc. Don't ever forget that YOU ARE JUST DUMB MONEY — all the bells&whistles are intended to get the money to it$ rightful corporate owner [1].

Tether's implosion (hopefully `when`, not `if`) would rock the entire cryptomarketcap; but ultimately would return the cryptocurrency-space to the principles founded within Satoshi's fundamental "white paper" [e.g. unlimited block sizes, no lightning/segwit, PoW, verifiable self-accountability].

I'll keep holding my breath, but until then... I'll keep HODL'ing.

[1] "I can spend it better" I once heard a philanthropist laugh to his subordinate.

> hedge funds use dark pools to make non-public trades, ensure fund liquidity, equity, lie, cheat, steal; etc.

No one is using dark pools to "lie, cheat, steal, etc." Plenty of market participants (including retail) use dark pools for goals like price improvement or sophisticated order handling like TWAP orders. Dark pools would not be possible without the lit markets that we all know and enjoy. All of these dark pool executions are reported to FINRA.

If you believe in a fair market with competant reporting requirements to functional agencies...

I've got an Eiffel Tower to sell you. I accept bitcoin.

If you believe there is more fraud in the securities markets than there is in the Bitcoin markets, I have some stolen North Korean Bitcoin to sell you.
=D

[This was legitimately a fun interaction, thanks for your perspective]

> ultimately would return the cryptocurrencty-space to the principles founded within Satoshi's fundamental "white paper" [e.g. unlimited block sizes, no lightning/segwit].

I think you're right about that, but I'm not sure things would end any better with a traditionalist approach. L1 cryptocurrencies are still fundamentally broken right now, if people found out that L2 chains were a scam it would probably dilute a lot of the interest in crypto as a whole.

> but until then... I'll keep HODL'ing.

Fortune is a fickle business.