4 ms·

Tether exists at all because exchanges don't want to follow regulations around USD. A government-approved fiat convertible cryptocurrency wouldn't change that.

Animats 8y ago
Tether exists because Bitcoin "exchanges" (who are really broker/dealers) are so bad at paying out USD. If I sell stocks via my US broker and tell them to wire transfer the proceeds to my bank, the money shows up the next day. Sometimes the same day. Try to find any crypto "exchange" that does that.
- tim333 8y ago
  Kraken do if you are "pro verified" (proof of residence, id,kyc) https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001461846-Introducing-High-Limit-USD-Funding- https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001461846-In...
- Scoundreller 8y ago
  exchanges would love to be able to do that, but can’t if they get cutoff from the banking system at every turn.
  - FireBeyond 8y ago
    In many cases they're being cut off because their standards for KYC/AML are lax to non-existent, or they don't have money transmitter licenses.
    - Scoundreller 8y ago
      Seems like a best case scenario. Either all exchanges have KYC/AML problems (possibly) or a lot of banks think of crypto like my school librarian did about the internet in the 90s: it’s all bad because anyone can publish with it.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  Coinbase took IIRC 2 days via ACH when I sold some BTC in Dec 2017. Might have been next-day. My broker is the same - it's usually 2 days.
- mruts 8y ago
  I think you are misunderstanding the point of tether. It’s not about paying out dollars, many companies have been paying out dollars from crypto long before tether existed. The point of tether and all stablecoins is to provide liquidity to the crypto market. That is, to easily ans nimbly zero out your crypto exposure. Before stablecoins if I thought btc was going to drop a lot in the next hour, the only thing I could do would be to buy some other crypto asset and hope to god they weren’t correlated with btc. But since all crypto ia highly correlated with each other this didn’t work very well. Tether was introduced as an uncorrelated store of value so I could quickly zero my exposure. Unfortunately, tether seems to have more exposure than it was supposed to have.

Animats 8y ago

Tether exists because Bitcoin "exchanges" (who are really broker/dealers) are so bad at paying out USD. If I sell stocks via my US broker and tell them to wire transfer the proceeds to my bank, the money shows up the next day. Sometimes the same day. Try to find any crypto "exchange" that does that.

tim333 8y ago
Kraken do if you are "pro verified" (proof of residence, id,kyc) https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001461846-Introducing-High-Limit-USD-Funding- https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001461846-In...
Scoundreller 8y ago
exchanges would love to be able to do that, but can’t if they get cutoff from the banking system at every turn.
- FireBeyond 8y ago
  In many cases they're being cut off because their standards for KYC/AML are lax to non-existent, or they don't have money transmitter licenses.
  - Scoundreller 8y ago
    Seems like a best case scenario. Either all exchanges have KYC/AML problems (possibly) or a lot of banks think of crypto like my school librarian did about the internet in the 90s: it’s all bad because anyone can publish with it.
nostrademons 8y ago
Coinbase took IIRC 2 days via ACH when I sold some BTC in Dec 2017. Might have been next-day. My broker is the same - it's usually 2 days.
mruts 8y ago
I think you are misunderstanding the point of tether. It’s not about paying out dollars, many companies have been paying out dollars from crypto long before tether existed. The point of tether and all stablecoins is to provide liquidity to the crypto market. That is, to easily ans nimbly zero out your crypto exposure. Before stablecoins if I thought btc was going to drop a lot in the next hour, the only thing I could do would be to buy some other crypto asset and hope to god they weren’t correlated with btc. But since all crypto ia highly correlated with each other this didn’t work very well. Tether was introduced as an uncorrelated store of value so I could quickly zero my exposure. Unfortunately, tether seems to have more exposure than it was supposed to have.