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One scam down at least, next the Tether printer and BitFinex boys. Clean up in aisle HKG please.
by sitepodmatt 9y ago
One scam down at least, next the Tether printer and BitFinex boys. Clean up in aisle HKG please.
- andirk 9y agoTether has remained at about $1/coin for a long time. Isn't it liquid if you trade it for BTC then to fiat?
- dudus 9y agoIf you trade it for bitcoin someone is selling you that bitcoin for tether. That person will go ahead and trade that tether for some other coin.... rinse repeat, but in the end someone is holding that Tether, if exchanges stop accepting tether eventually your only option is to cash out to USD. USDT is basically being used as a trade coin, to avoid cashing out (maybe to avoid taxation) or to speculate on USD with the intent to eventually redeem for USD. At some point someone will try to cash out on the tether. And that's when we'll find out if Bitfinex really has the USD reserves to back that as they say they have. But it's getting harder and harder to believe that money really exists. Tether keeps getting printed by the millions specially when bitcoin is on a downtrend (just today 200M was printed). For some reason I doubt someone wrote them a check for 200M USD today. Also Bitfinex never completed or released audits they promised. The more you dig the more it looks like Bitfinex is printing fake money to pump cryptocoins.
- bhouston 9y agoIf $200M was printed today, then it likely doesn't exist. Hilarious that this is going on. At some point the music has to stop.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- leetbulb 9y agoJust as reference as the comment here was deleted. Pretty important stuff. http://omnichest.info/lookupadd.aspx?address=3MbYQMMmSkC3AgWkj9FMo5LsPTW1zBTwXL http://omnichest.info/lookupadd.aspx?address=3MbYQMMmSkC3AgW... https://i.imgur.com/BsPSZKO.png https://i.imgur.com/BsPSZKO.png
- bhouston 9y agoBasically I think the tether are fraudulent. I do not have proof but they likely are. What is the best way to make money on them? Can one short tether?
- 9500 9y agoIt is possible to short tether on kraken platform...
- jonknee 9y agoThough good luck getting paid when shit hits the fan, Kraken will go down along with Tether.
- ForHackernews 9y agoIf you're in the UK, try to find a bookie who'll take your bet.
- empath75 9y agoGood chance the interest rates will wipe you out before the price crashes.
- zhjansbnas 9y agoHow does the printed tether enter the market?
- jiggunjer 9y agoI'm guessing the company offers them on some exchange, maybe slightly discounted.
- andypants 9y agoBitfinex buys cryptos with them on their own exchange. They get free cryptos, and everybody else gets monopoly money in exchange. Tether is such a scam it's unbelievable.
- bhouston 9y agoBitfinex should then sell that crypto for real USD on other exchanges. They could make a killing and then somehow launder the money so that when the Tether scam is exposed, they are safe with real hard USDs.
- ForHackernews 9y agoThere's a twitter account that tracks the printing of new Tether: https://twitter.com/tetherprinter https://twitter.com/tetherprinter There was another $100m invented 11 hours ago, in addition to the $100m created on Monday.
- Nursie 9y agoJesus, they've printed 250 million of them in the last three days!
- jonknee 9y agoIt's hard to catch a falling knife!
- ForHackernews 9y agoAnother 100m right now. So 350m in 3 days?
- csomar 9y agoThey don't really "print" a $200million. Finex explanation is that when a user requests USDT they issue new USDT from their USD reserves.
- arethuza 9y agoYou really believe they added $200million to their USD reserves to cover the USDT? Edit: Where would they get that USD?
- Yizahi 9y agoWith a dump truck full of unmarked dollars in small denominations in some dark Bangkok alley, provided by generous institutional investor. Obviously.
- dudus 9y agoThey say it's their "institutional investors", they never release who these are (some people say it's Bitfinex themselves), they never release what bank they use or which country is the money deposited in. It's rotten to the core... The consensus is that they either don't have that money at all (most likely scenario) or that if they do it's all dirty money and they are operating a money laundry scheme....
- PeterisP 9y agoUnless they would prove to the public and/or competent regulatory authorities that they definitely have done that, they should be considered as "printing" this money. Proven reserves count, claimed reserves don't. If USDT is "covered" by reserves that are claimed but not verified, then USDT is not covered.
- ForHackernews 9y agoTether did a fake "audit" to show they were legitimate: https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/the-so-called-tether-audit-that-isnt-an-audit-at-all-5a40cfcc2a75 https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/the-so-called-tether-audit-th...
- t3chn0SchO0lbus 9y agoI keep trying to wrap my head around the economics of this and maybe give Tether the benefit of doubt. I think the most damning technical detail is that there is no client-side wallet. We can't trade Tether amongst ourselves or engage in any trades that Tether doesn't have at least indirect control of.
- taberiand 9y agoTether is a scam, 100%. It's fake money materialized out of thin air to pump Bitcoin.
- trophycase 9y agoYes you can. Tether is an asset on the Omni protocol and is expanding to ERC20
- ufo 9y agoThe most damning thing for me is that none of the many exchanges trading tethers allow you to trade them for US dollars. The only way to cash out of tether now is to buy cryptocoins and transfer them to a non-tether exchange.
- jv22222 9y agoThe concept of tether is a good one. I wish that a reputable company or YC startup would do exactly the same thing but in a very legitamate way. It seems like they could make a good amount of money by charging withdrawal and transfer fees.
- mancerayder 9y agoHow does one keep track of each Tether-like coin's fiat backing?
- frakr 9y agoHas it? https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/#charts https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/#charts
- andirk 9y agoThat's what I'm saying. If they are actually able to always trade at very close to USD every day for over a year, does not that show stability in the coin? If it is, in fact, printed money, then it keeps working so far. Just like USD.
- empath75 9y agoLow trading volume on kraken, easy to wash trade to fix the price where you want.
- BayesStreet 9y agoI'm aware that tether's reserves are a little doubtful, but could you elaborate on why Bitfinex is sketchy?
- yla92 9y agoI believe the main concern is whether 1 tether is actually backed by 1 USD. There is a series of articles[0] about why tether and Bitfinex are scary [0]: https://medium.com/@bitfinexed https://medium.com/@bitfinexed
- spookthesunset 9y agoFor starters, they don't deal in USD at all. They deal in "USDT", which isn't at all USD but a token called a tether that is somehow magically supposed to be pegged so 1 USDT == 1USD that you can... well... I dunno what you can do with a tether but one thing you can't do is turn it into actual fiat money on Bitfinex. You might be able to convert it to cold hard fiat on some other exchange though, but odds are good said exchange will be even more sketchy than Bitfinex. Better still, the "market cap" for tether is over 1.6 billion USD with 5.5 billion in volume today. What happens when people actually want to turn that 1.6 billion of outstanding tether into dirty fiat? Who is gonna buy all those sells into USD? The exchanges? You think those guys are holding 1.6 billion in actual fiat money? So if you like the idea that the most active "USD" exchange (bitfinex, according to coinmarketcap) isn't actually trading in "USD" but some kind of funny money that is supposed to always be pegged to the dollar but backed by absolutely nothing at all.... Consider what will happen when the crypto bubble collapse really starts to pick up and all those tether holders want back into filthy dirty American dollars. Good fucking luck. It's just another facet of what makes the crypto "space" so fascinating. It is just layer upon layer of scams. Scammers scamming scammers. And yet people, even some supposedly smart people here on HN, continue to fall for the crypto scam every day. PS: for a good time read the tether TOS: https://tether.to/legal/ https://tether.to/legal/
- bhouston 9y agoThe dotcom bubble wiped out $5T of value. I think the cryptocurrency bubble is still smaller than $1T. I think that many are not falling for the scams but rather are "momentum investing" and hoping their timing is good.
- Alex3917 9y agoTether just hit a new all time high of $1.07, making the return on investment significantly better than most VC funds.
- AlexCoventry 9y agoThat's only because people wanted to reduce exposure to crypto today, and USDT is the closest approximation to that available for some exchange-committed funds.
- jacobush 9y agoapparent approximation
- mcintyre1994 9y agoIsn't the entire point of it to be pegged 1USDT === 1USD? Obviously it fails at that by being backed by nothing like enough USD, but what does it being worth $1.07 even mean? Also, where do you sell Tethers given Bitfinex won't exchange them for USD?
- sitepodmatt 9y agoYou can't without difficulty, you have to convert them to BTC or ETH and send them to Coinbase or other reputable exchange then cash out in fiat, in a window where all three securities wallets at respective exchanges aren't in maintenance, network isn't blocked by cryptokittes, and you've passed all AML/KYC including possibly justifying where incoming has came from. There are a lot of people that will find cashing out to fiat very difficult hence why some are parking in Tethers even though they aware of the dubious nature, and thus tether is trading at greater than a dollar. Personally, I wouldn't want to touch tether even for a few minutes, as sod's law it would be my luck that Securities & Futures Commission of Hong Kong or Hong Kong police decide to act just at that moment I buy tethers (well technically the problem will be once it's on TV and value drops to 0).
- trophycase 9y agoBuy BTC with tether, send to GDAX. Sell BTC for real USD
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> One scam down Did...it just re-launch? With a new token, BCCX?! https://bitconnectx.co https://bitconnectx.co
- avenoir 9y agoThis is pretty unbelievable. And they're running an ICO right now.
- ckastner 9y agoIt's definitely unconscionable, but totally believable to me. The kind of people who fell for this the first time, are exactly the kind of people who would fall for this the second time.
- keymone 9y agono link to whitepaper? pff.. amateurs.
- mancerayder 9y agoIsn't Tether incorporated in Hong Kong? How lax is HK on financial fraud?