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It's a money printing machine in the sense they printed 100s of millions of tethers whenever they wanted. Problem is no one will give you $1 for a tether (excep
by Scott_Sanderson 8y ago
It's a money printing machine in the sense they printed 100s of millions of tethers whenever they wanted. Problem is no one will give you $1 for a tether (except a very thin market on Kraken). Instead, they used the tethers to buy bitcoin and pump the price, then cashed out their bitcoin to fiat in over-the-counter deals.
- jaaames 8y agoCorrect. There's also a strong relationship between Tether and Bitfinex directors. It's suspected they were using margin loans to leverage their fake money further, while denying fiat withdrawals to real customers.
- paulgb 8y agoSay you print $100M USDT and do this, and the market moves up 10%, and you get lucky enough to find an OTC buyer willing to give you the market price. You rake in 110M for printing 100M. This is still a money printing business model, the market manipulation is just icing on the cake.
- gph 8y agoBut printing the money is only useful in that it manipulates the market price to go that 10% higher which is where you make the profits. If they printed that money and everyone found it worthless and the market didn't response they wouldn't have a business model. Edit: I guess I should say that's the conjecture of those saying Tether was created purely for profit based on market manipulation. I don't have an inside knowledge on what was going through the heads of those at bitfinix who created it.
- paulgb 8y ago> But printing the money is only useful in that it manipulates the market price to go that 10% higher which is where you make the profits. If you print money you have free money. That's pure profit. Anything else is just a bonus.