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It took Liberty Reserve 7 years and 17 countries cooperating to get nuked from orbit. Tether was founded as Realcoin in 2014 by a group including former child

It took Liberty Reserve 7 years and 17 countries cooperating to get nuked from orbit. Tether was founded as Realcoin in 2014 by a group including former child star and accused sex offender Brock Pierce, so while it’s technically just rounding the 7 year mark, it didn’t begin in earnest until it was taken over by Bitfinex towards 2015 and didn’t become majorly problematic until 2016/2017 according to the NYAG findings. [1] Given the vastly larger scope here, I suspect we’re going to be dealing with them for a few more years as the wheels of Justice spool up. For anyone wanting to learn more I highly recommend Bennett Tomlins write up. [2] [1] https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2021.02.17_-_settlement_agreement_-_execution_version.b-t_signed-c2_oag_signed.pdf https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2021.02.17_-_settlemen... [2] https://bennettftomlin.com/2020/12/08/an-introduction-to-the-tether-bitfinex-controversy/ https://bennettftomlin.com/2020/12/08/an-introduction-to-the...

soared 5y ago
> by a group including former child star and accused sex offender This makes your argument seem conspiracy-theory-esque, despite your links having some quality information. That quote is more akin to clickbait than it is a valid point in your argument.
- Daishiman 5y ago
  Every other crypto investment seems to be run by someone with past criminal convictions, accusations of sexual misconduct, or shady past. I have somehow been able to avoid all of this in my own career without much effort. It speaks volumes that this is the kind of characters interested in this space.
  - numair 5y ago
    So you’ve never used anything connected to Facebook?
    - skinnymuch 5y ago
      What could this possibly mean? Why single out Facebook?
- arcticbull 5y ago
  It was a little ad hominemey, for color. I'll own that criticism.
adflux 5y ago
Bennett has done a fantastic job. There WILL be a movie about this company when investors lose faith. Like next decades, "the big short".
- fny 5y ago
  But how exactly do you short stablecoins? You can't and even if you did the game is heavily rigged against you. If you remember in the movie, Cohodes got his ass handed to him as banks margin called him out of his position and that's in a regulated market. These guys own their market and the exchange on which it originates. There's no way to even verify if they received dollars for every tether issued and by some miracle the yield on USDT is incredible. You'd be losing 4-5% a year guaranteed holding a short position.
  - fabianhjr 5y ago
    All shorting consists on 5 steps: 1. Borrow 2. Sell 3. Wait 4. Buy back 5. Close There is USDT lending available. Even more, there is decentralized collateralized lending available. If someone wanted to short USDT there are plenty of opportunities to do so. (And there might be a lot of people doing so, specially now that the shadyness is being reported on some of the more reputable traditional newspapers)
    - alisonkisk 5y ago
      Does "5. Close" happen? In cryptocurrency it's usually some form of "4.5 Rug pull"
    - smabie 5y ago
      Also you can trade the USDT/USD swaps as well
      - arcticbull 5y ago
        You can only do that at exchanges that are seriously exposed to systemic Tether risk and will also collapse if USDT goes down. So even if you're right, you won't get paid on USDT/USD swaps. Shorting USDT at Bitfinex is like shorting Caesars chips at Caesars. News flash: if Caesars goes bankrupt just which cashier do you think is gonna give you which dollars?
jcpham2 5y ago
Bitcoin effectively is the reason I stopped leaving breadcrumbs for Twitter researchers in the future. I read his research and see forum posts from idiots we use to laugh at on irc, but I myself participated in the pirate@40 ponzi, as other people did - maybe 47 poor souls if memory serves. What a lot people can’t seem to grasp about 2012 is Bitcoin miners were flush with Bitcoin and no place to spend it, no place to invest or divest it. So you are bored it’s a nascent market you browse the forum it’s all one big joke anyways- until it’s not anymore. But you are looking for something to do with Bitcoin and you have to possibilities: bitcointalk or #bitcoin-otc of freenode One of these requires a registered gpg to trade, one is a dang website So flush with bitcoins We were running Perl pool hopping proxy scripts to game block rewards and jump to deepbit last minute pre next block - boosting profits by 25%. Trendon Shavers aka The Jimmy Buffer PonziMan also ran a mining meta pool gpumax.com where we could buy gpu shares, say 10 million shares of hash power from your 10 buddies running 10 rigs stuffed full of gpus and then you point that at one of the two Bitcoin mining pools that were left paying a Proportional payout scheme instead of PPLNS (pay per last n shares) and take most of the whole pool rewards in a flurry of blocks blocks blocks… kinda like satoshidice except fun - maximizing ROI and exploiting Bitcoin mining pool payouts was kinda neat for awhile I normally don’t do this, but the comments and citations have me feeling nostalgic and I do enjoy reading u/arcticbull
- Danieru 5y ago
  Can you explain how the proportional payout is broken? It is not immediately obvious to me how the pool hopping worked. Of course I accept it was broken, I've just never seen an explanation of now. Any explanation of PPLN lasts the historic perspective.
  - jcpham2 5y ago
    Early on Bitcoin mining pools payed proportional to mining hashpower. Not PPLNS, not PPS, just proportional. Bithopper would basically jump to, or jump away from deepbit( the largest proportional payout pool) on long rounds, long 10 minute blocks. Deepbit and Bitcoin.lc were basically the only two proportional pools you could overwhelm with hashpower, take block rewards from the pool, and damn anyone’s shares or how long they mined there for how many blocks. Others could and should be able to speak to pool hopping but this is why the pools pay the way they do - we exploited the payouts early
doublepg23 5y ago
> Brock Pierce Excellent documentary involving him called "Open Secret".

soared 5y ago

> by a group including former child star and accused sex offender This makes your argument seem conspiracy-theory-esque, despite your links having some quality information. That quote is more akin to clickbait than it is a valid point in your argument.

Daishiman 5y ago
Every other crypto investment seems to be run by someone with past criminal convictions, accusations of sexual misconduct, or shady past. I have somehow been able to avoid all of this in my own career without much effort. It speaks volumes that this is the kind of characters interested in this space.
- numair 5y ago
  So you’ve never used anything connected to Facebook?
  - skinnymuch 5y ago
    What could this possibly mean? Why single out Facebook?
arcticbull 5y ago
It was a little ad hominemey, for color. I'll own that criticism.

adflux 5y ago

Bennett has done a fantastic job. There WILL be a movie about this company when investors lose faith. Like next decades, "the big short".

fny 5y ago
But how exactly do you short stablecoins? You can't and even if you did the game is heavily rigged against you. If you remember in the movie, Cohodes got his ass handed to him as banks margin called him out of his position and that's in a regulated market. These guys own their market and the exchange on which it originates. There's no way to even verify if they received dollars for every tether issued and by some miracle the yield on USDT is incredible. You'd be losing 4-5% a year guaranteed holding a short position.
- fabianhjr 5y ago
  All shorting consists on 5 steps: 1. Borrow 2. Sell 3. Wait 4. Buy back 5. Close There is USDT lending available. Even more, there is decentralized collateralized lending available. If someone wanted to short USDT there are plenty of opportunities to do so. (And there might be a lot of people doing so, specially now that the shadyness is being reported on some of the more reputable traditional newspapers)
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    Does "5. Close" happen? In cryptocurrency it's usually some form of "4.5 Rug pull"
  - smabie 5y ago
    Also you can trade the USDT/USD swaps as well
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      You can only do that at exchanges that are seriously exposed to systemic Tether risk and will also collapse if USDT goes down. So even if you're right, you won't get paid on USDT/USD swaps. Shorting USDT at Bitfinex is like shorting Caesars chips at Caesars. News flash: if Caesars goes bankrupt just which cashier do you think is gonna give you which dollars?

jcpham2 5y ago

Bitcoin effectively is the reason I stopped leaving breadcrumbs for Twitter researchers in the future. I read his research and see forum posts from idiots we use to laugh at on irc, but I myself participated in the pirate@40 ponzi, as other people did - maybe 47 poor souls if memory serves. What a lot people can’t seem to grasp about 2012 is Bitcoin miners were flush with Bitcoin and no place to spend it, no place to invest or divest it. So you are bored it’s a nascent market you browse the forum it’s all one big joke anyways- until it’s not anymore. But you are looking for something to do with Bitcoin and you have to possibilities: bitcointalk or #bitcoin-otc of freenode One of these requires a registered gpg to trade, one is a dang website So flush with bitcoins We were running Perl pool hopping proxy scripts to game block rewards and jump to deepbit last minute pre next block - boosting profits by 25%. Trendon Shavers aka The Jimmy Buffer PonziMan also ran a mining meta pool gpumax.com where we could buy gpu shares, say 10 million shares of hash power from your 10 buddies running 10 rigs stuffed full of gpus and then you point that at one of the two Bitcoin mining pools that were left paying a Proportional payout scheme instead of PPLNS (pay per last n shares) and take most of the whole pool rewards in a flurry of blocks blocks blocks… kinda like satoshidice except fun - maximizing ROI and exploiting Bitcoin mining pool payouts was kinda neat for awhile I normally don’t do this, but the comments and citations have me feeling nostalgic and I do enjoy reading u/arcticbull

Danieru 5y ago
Can you explain how the proportional payout is broken? It is not immediately obvious to me how the pool hopping worked. Of course I accept it was broken, I've just never seen an explanation of now. Any explanation of PPLN lasts the historic perspective.
- jcpham2 5y ago
  Early on Bitcoin mining pools payed proportional to mining hashpower. Not PPLNS, not PPS, just proportional. Bithopper would basically jump to, or jump away from deepbit( the largest proportional payout pool) on long rounds, long 10 minute blocks. Deepbit and Bitcoin.lc were basically the only two proportional pools you could overwhelm with hashpower, take block rewards from the pool, and damn anyone’s shares or how long they mined there for how many blocks. Others could and should be able to speak to pool hopping but this is why the pools pay the way they do - we exploited the payouts early

doublepg23 5y ago

> Brock Pierce Excellent documentary involving him called "Open Secret".