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Tether to me comes across as one of these things HN and the skeptics got so painfully wrong for years. It would be amusing to go through all the posts from 201

Tether to me comes across as one of these things HN and the skeptics got so painfully wrong for years. It would be amusing to go through all the posts from 2017 on the subject.

ceejayoz 6y ago
Bernie Madoff's scam lasted perhaps as much as 40 years. It was still a scam.
- hutzlibu 6y ago
  And the catholic church is around even longer .. claiming to be the only ones who know the eternal truth. (luckily they lost power, so today they can only claim(mostly) and not enforce)
arcticbull 6y ago
I think you'd find them pretty consistent: "where is the audit you keep promising?"
- shobith 6y ago
  But what about Hillary's emails!
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Hillary didn't promise to hire an auditor over, and over for years, then hire an auditor, and then fire the auditor when things started going pear-shaped during the audit. Or, you know, have 30% of her email seized in an AML sting. My point is, the analogy falls over right quick. I'm also not asking for proof of a negative (that Hillary didn't destroy her emails). I'm asking for proof of an affirmative. That Tether does have funds to back it's liabilities. Should be easy. Bring in KPMG, show them your bank accounts and have them attest to it. If they do that I'll shout how wrong I was from the rooftops. I'm only asking them to follow through on their numerous, repeated promises over a half decade. "We are aware of online discussions about Tether’s lack of publicly-available audits. Periodic audits of our bank balances have been performed by the Taiwan-based auditing firm TOPSUN CPAs & Co. The results of those audits were for the benefit of shareholders and were not in a form suitable for public consumption (to begin with, they were in Mandarin)" [1]. ... they couldn't share these audits because they were in Mandarin?! Where on earth would they find a translator. [1] https://tether.to/tether-update/ https://tether.to/tether-update/
    - shobith 6y ago
      What does tether have to do with bitcoin's block reward halving? I couldn't see any references to it here: http://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin http://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin
      - arcticbull 6y ago
        The only reason the halving is at all relevant is that it affects the unit economics of bitcoin mining, which brings into the conversation the "value" of a bitcoin, which is determined by Tether. It's all connected.
        jkhdigital 6y ago
        The price quoted on exchanges may or may not be influenced by Tether. However, the Bitcoin protocol itself and the monetary properties this protocol possesses are unaffected by the presence of Tether. In other words: yes, we all understand the issues with Tether. I’m still hodling. You do you.
        arcticbull 6y ago
        > You do you. I sold at BTC$17000, thanks. The only thing Bitcoin is worth is what someone is willing to pay you for it since it has no, you know, underlying value. If that number is determined substantially by manipulators, well, what good is it? It may as well say "In Giancarlo Devasini [1] We Trust" on it. The "monetary property" it possesses is defined in Tethers. You can send them back and forth all day but if you have no baseline of what it can be exchanged for, I can just move lines in my spreadsheet back and forth too. That's not a "monetary quality." [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/person/giancarlo-devasini#section-overview https://www.crunchbase.com/person/giancarlo-devasini#section...
    - FireBeyond 6y ago
      > "We are aware of online discussions about Tether’s lack of publicly-available audits. Periodic audits of our bank balances have been performed by the Taiwan-based auditing firm TOPSUN CPAs & Co. The results of those audits were for the benefit of shareholders and were not in a form suitable for public consumption (to begin with, they were in Mandarin)" Note that they never said the audit _agreed with_ the numbers listed on the website/exchanges. Also note that the shareholders of Tether are Bitfinex, who, in addition to being an exchange is... Tether.

Tether to me comes across as one of these things HN and the skeptics got so painfully wrong for years. It would be amusing to go through all the posts from 2017 on the subject.

ceejayoz 6y ago

Bernie Madoff's scam lasted perhaps as much as 40 years. It was still a scam.

hutzlibu 6y ago
And the catholic church is around even longer .. claiming to be the only ones who know the eternal truth. (luckily they lost power, so today they can only claim(mostly) and not enforce)

arcticbull 6y ago

I think you'd find them pretty consistent: "where is the audit you keep promising?"

shobith 6y ago
But what about Hillary's emails!
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Hillary didn't promise to hire an auditor over, and over for years, then hire an auditor, and then fire the auditor when things started going pear-shaped during the audit. Or, you know, have 30% of her email seized in an AML sting. My point is, the analogy falls over right quick. I'm also not asking for proof of a negative (that Hillary didn't destroy her emails). I'm asking for proof of an affirmative. That Tether does have funds to back it's liabilities. Should be easy. Bring in KPMG, show them your bank accounts and have them attest to it. If they do that I'll shout how wrong I was from the rooftops. I'm only asking them to follow through on their numerous, repeated promises over a half decade. "We are aware of online discussions about Tether’s lack of publicly-available audits. Periodic audits of our bank balances have been performed by the Taiwan-based auditing firm TOPSUN CPAs & Co. The results of those audits were for the benefit of shareholders and were not in a form suitable for public consumption (to begin with, they were in Mandarin)" [1]. ... they couldn't share these audits because they were in Mandarin?! Where on earth would they find a translator. [1] https://tether.to/tether-update/ https://tether.to/tether-update/
  - shobith 6y ago
    What does tether have to do with bitcoin's block reward halving? I couldn't see any references to it here: http://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin http://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      The only reason the halving is at all relevant is that it affects the unit economics of bitcoin mining, which brings into the conversation the "value" of a bitcoin, which is determined by Tether. It's all connected.
      - jkhdigital 6y ago
        The price quoted on exchanges may or may not be influenced by Tether. However, the Bitcoin protocol itself and the monetary properties this protocol possesses are unaffected by the presence of Tether. In other words: yes, we all understand the issues with Tether. I’m still hodling. You do you.
        arcticbull 6y ago
        > You do you. I sold at BTC$17000, thanks. The only thing Bitcoin is worth is what someone is willing to pay you for it since it has no, you know, underlying value. If that number is determined substantially by manipulators, well, what good is it? It may as well say "In Giancarlo Devasini [1] We Trust" on it. The "monetary property" it possesses is defined in Tethers. You can send them back and forth all day but if you have no baseline of what it can be exchanged for, I can just move lines in my spreadsheet back and forth too. That's not a "monetary quality." [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/person/giancarlo-devasini#section-overview https://www.crunchbase.com/person/giancarlo-devasini#section...
  - FireBeyond 6y ago
    > "We are aware of online discussions about Tether’s lack of publicly-available audits. Periodic audits of our bank balances have been performed by the Taiwan-based auditing firm TOPSUN CPAs & Co. The results of those audits were for the benefit of shareholders and were not in a form suitable for public consumption (to begin with, they were in Mandarin)" Note that they never said the audit _agreed with_ the numbers listed on the website/exchanges. Also note that the shareholders of Tether are Bitfinex, who, in addition to being an exchange is... Tether.