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The fact that they've been minting billions of tether without collateral should make it abundantly obvious that this isn't a stablecoin and never had been. Anyo

The fact that they've been minting billions of tether without collateral should make it abundantly obvious that this isn't a stablecoin and never had been. Anyone can pretend to have a peg in the good times, that doesn't mean there's really a peg or that the peg will remain in bad times. And if you can't count on the peg in bad times, it's not a stablecoin. If you've been honestly working on the assumption that it is, then you deserve to lose your (real) money to some crypto VCs on an island somewhere. And this doesn't only apply to crypto, look at how many countries with currency pegs can maintain that when their economy turns down, and then look at how many people actually seek to own the currency at that point rather than a currency backed by something (like a gigantic economy).

shafyy 4y ago
> If you've been honestly working on the assumption that it is, then you deserve to lose your (real) money to some crypto VCs on an island somewhere. The sad reality is that many poorer and financially illeterate people have been tricked by VCs and other grifters into this with billions of dollars spent in advertising. So, no, they don't deserve to lose their money to these assholes. These assholes need to be prosecuted, fined and put to jail if necessary.
- sshine 4y ago
  > many poorer and financially illeterate people have been tricked I’m sorry, but it’s worse than that. Whenever I’ve said “Tether is a scam waiting to blow up, and the evidence is obvious”, none of my smart peers had anything to say, either. The BTC price is hells high by this fake USD money printer. At least people are collectively waking up. Brrrr.
  - tluyben2 4y ago
    The religious (for a lack of better word as it is a religion to believe that cryptocurrencies are inherently better than other assets (outside NFTs) but they do believe that if you read twitter/reddit) people are hodling but all the 'saner' people I know went out in december. There was enough writing on the wall to know that 2022 would not be a good year for some assets (and it's just beginning). Only the real believers are still holding and it's a drama; a friend of mine went 'all in' on Terra and is staunchly 'hodling' because he believes it's the greatest project in finance since humans invented currencies. He has 30+ years work of money in it which is his families money (his brothers and parents gave him their savings to 'invest') etc. But he is not depressed; he firmly believes it is coming back as it's decentralized. There are many of him. MANY. I mean there are also other stories; an acquaintance (he invested in my business with cash in 2018) got out end 2017 with around 60m$ in cash; he was a waiter making minimum wage who borrowed 50k$ from his family who remortgaged their house (not rich people but at least house owners) in 2014 and gambled his families future and accidentally (he was a real believer, but the 'business scams' around blockchain made him a non-believer) gambled right. It's a weird casino. Maybe it is my circle (but I read it on reddit all the time the past 10 years though) but the financially illiterate seem far more likely to 'invest' with borrowed money, do not diversify and put 'everything on red'/all-in kind of thing and then don't know what to do when that goes wrong (lie to their spouses and kids about it). An senior sales guy of my (then) company invested ALL his money and borrowed more (totaling many millions) in a Dutch web stock (worldonline) and lost everything; his wife, son, house, cars; basically life.
    - Animats 4y ago
      There are many of him. MANY. See Reddit's "apecoin" subreddit, which had two suicide threats yesterday.
      - nradov 4y ago
        Don't believe stories you read on Reddit. Most of them are creative writing exercises.
      - tluyben2 4y ago
        Well, if your 'advisors' (usually indicated in reddit/twitter as people 'much smarter than me' by which they mean devs who work on blockchain projects and 'financial gurus' who post a lot of charts with arrows pointing 'in the right direction' (which wasn't hard the past few years as it was generally just 'up' unless Musk posted something)) say it's a sure thing and suddenly you are at the start of a recession with massive inflation and your entire savings wiped out... It is hard to blame them; saying 'it is only money' works when you have money. Luckily there is quite a bit of help and helplines to talk them down.
    - spupe 4y ago
      Yeah, this is the dark side of all this "diamond hands", "to the moon" bullshit. A handful of winners, a majority of losers, and some people going complete bankrupt because they are foolish.
      - arinlen 4y ago
        > Yeah, this is the dark side of all this "diamond hands", "to the moon" bullshit. Also known as "please continue holding the bag".
    - hnbad 4y ago
      You're perfectly describing the sunk cost fallacy. The naifs who overcomitted on a "guaranteed win" investment can't walk back from it because that would mean giving up on a lot (e.g. 50% or more) of their investments, which often as you said isn't money they really had "lying around" (even your retirement fund isn't really disposable once you actually need to retire on it). The failure to achieve the promised growth paradoxically converts them into true believers because they see no way out without admitting they ruined their lives. A lot of crypto grifters (and even mainstream celebrities) have been actively encouraging these people to sink literally all their capital in coins or NFTs with unrealistic promises and FOMO. They did this because they knew it would work and drive up prices enough for them to be able to cash out by dumping their worthless void money on the unwashed masses.
  - outside1234 4y ago
    We have been saying it - but have been dismissed as being "anti-crypto"
    - stevekemp 4y ago
      Yeah it's a tricky one. It seems obvious that "digital money" is going to be very useful in a lot of ways, and in the future is almost certain to appear. There was a very brief period when bitcoin might have been the start of such a thing. When companies were adding support for it, and people were spending 200+ bitcoin on pizza, actually doing useful things like transferring money internationally, etc. But these days? It's all speculation, gambling, and HODLing to the moon. Maybe in the future we'll have a cryptocurrency which is actually usable as a currency, spent, and being in circulation, not being mined and hoarded by people who expect 1000000% returns.
      - FeepingCreature 4y ago
        A deflationary currency was never going to be viable as money.
        ekianjo 4y ago
        there are still bitcoins being mined. where is it deflationary?
        swalsh 4y ago
        To me the issue is the supply of tokens is not correlated to the actual underlying supply of goods and services in the economy. Tokens should be minted/burned according to the fundumentals of the underlying economy. Hard to do with a single digital currency as there is a whole economy. But viable with ERC-20's, which can be turned into micro-currencies. The great thing about ERC20 tokens, is you can swap them pretty effortlessly. And on a chain like Avalanche, it's cheap and scalable.
        mensetmanusman 4y ago
  - Cthulhu_ 4y ago
    > none of my smart peers had anything to say, either. It's because they know. I think everybody knows that crypto is a bubble. I think everybody believes everyone else that buys into it is dumb, financially illiterate, whatever. The crypto market has been propped up and boosted by an influx of people like that, each one knowing it's a bubble, believing everyone else is an idiot... but still wanting a slice of the pie, just in case there's another big wave coming and they will make it rich themselves. It's an interesting study in idk, doublethink? Self-delusion? Wishful thinking?
    - iso1210 4y ago
      It's the greater fool theory. I lauched at friends of my fatherinlaw back in 2018 when they were buying bitcoin at 15k. Obviously it popped. Today it's down 50% on ATH, but it's still more than double it's 2018 bubble level.
      - kgwgk 4y ago
        It's not more than double 15k, is it?
        iso1210 4y ago
        Yahoo finance says its 30,279.67 at the moment after a collapse in everything over the last week or so.
        kgwgk 4y ago
        You wrote “it's still more than double it's 2018 bubble level”. If you meant “in the future it may be again more than double its 2018 bubble level” you could have phrased it more clearly. The 2018 peak was above 19k, by the way.
      - DebtDeflation 4y ago
        We will almost certainly see pre-2017 prices at some point.
  - etherael 4y ago
    I have been saying this for over five years and never had even an attempt at a rebuttal. Most people in crypto with a clue simply accept it as a fact. USDT needs to die for the market to have any sensibility at all. Six years ago daily usdt volumes would not break 3 percent of bitcoin trade volume. Now they routinely break three hundred percent. It is an indisputable scam and needs the flush it so richly deserves. And I say this as somebody pro crypto who honestly wants to see legitimate crypto do what it can for the world. Transparently manipulating this market the way it has for so long now is not doing that. We need real prices.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - alrs 4y ago
    I think you're confusing "smart" for "upper middle class people with gleaming straight teeth."
  - bratwurst3000 4y ago
    Yes I thought that so many people that it’s so obvious but they didn’t believe it and still did Invest in crypto. Their FOMO had total control of them. They didn’t want to understand the concept they just wanted to be part of something bigger
  - eric_cc 4y ago
    > USD money printer. So we know USD is a scam and manipulated heavily. Learn about The Fed.. > BTC And here we have an alternative. This is one of the primary reasons why BTC is so important.
- mdoms 4y ago
  They do deserve it.
- yread 4y ago
  Assholes need to be jailed and we can feel for the greedy people losing their money. On the other hand they wouldn't have shared their gains with us if it went well so they can't expect us to bail them out when it goes bad
  - greyhair 4y ago
    This. Exactly this. In some ways, this mirrors the current student debt crisis. Only 13% of the US population holds student debt, and 80% of student debt is held by earners in the upper 20% of income. But suddenly, we are supposed to cancel all that debt. ????? Same thing with the market crash in 2008. Oh, we have to bail out all those banks because otherwise pension funds will lose value. Not close completely, but lose value. So a bunch of people with no hope of ever having a pension have to be taxed to bail out existing pensions (in effect). And then AIG having the gall, after effectively failing, and only being propped up by Federal dollars, complaining ten years after that the government unfairly held back some of their profits because the government backing came with stock holdings to back the loan, and AIG had to buy the stock back. So yeah, Crypto is an issue, but the major banks are also an issue, and people that are stupid (or greedy) about money are an issue.
    - pirate787 4y ago
      Agree. The median student loan burden is very manageable-- less than a new car -- and the issue is manufactured for political purposes on the left to turn out younger voters.
- cm2187 4y ago
  Every good con relies on greed. The fact that the con artist is a criminal doesn’t make the victim of a con any less greedy. I am thinking of the many crypto fanboys here who have been repeatedly told this is a large ponzi scheme. They had plenty of warnings. I don’t have a huge amount of sympathy for them loosing money. Doesn’t mean the con artists shouldn’t face criminal prosecution (if they broke the law, it’s not a crime to sell tulips to people who think the tulip is worth all of their savings).
  - fortran77 4y ago
    “You can’t cheat an honest man.”
- CryptoPunk 4y ago
  >>The sad reality is that many poorer and financially illeterate people have been tricked by VCs and other grifters into this with billions of dollars spent in advertising. I'm a consumer of tether. I know the risks, and I take a calculated risk in using it for some applications. I perceive almost everything in the space as an experiment, and I'm willing to run that experiment. I personally believe that my sentiment is common among those who use and hold crypto assets. Cryptocurrencies are widely perceived as experimental and subject to large unexpected rice declines, hacks and other risks. That goes for stablecoins too. I don't want you to forcibly prevent people from making any offer they want to me. By doing so, you are violating my right to free association, and assuming you know better than me what's best for me. I am not a child. Maybe we can give people an option to suspend their rights as free citizens, and subject themselves to your political camp's centralized control, and leave every one else alone to decide for themselves, in accordance with the basic principles of liberal democracy. Is that a fair compromise, or are you going to presume large sections of your fellow citizens are not only financially illiterate, but also are too poor in judgment to realize they are better off under the control of people like you?
  - rglullis 4y ago
    The problem is one of ethics, though: It's one thing to say "I've used it to move money" and "I believe and trust that they have the reserves they claim to have and I'm willing to hold USDT forever". If you just use USDT as a hot potato, your "calculated risk" is meaningless and you should be calling out that Tether is a fraud.
    - CryptoPunk 4y ago
- Rexxar 4y ago
  They deserve to lose and those who have 'tricked' them should be prosecuted. We can have both. Culpability of one side doesn't make the other side innocent victims. It's not bad people against good people, it's bad people everywhere in this situation.
  - bsenftner 4y ago
    There is also an amount of blame on our government and the shameful treatment of educating society. In a Capitalist driven country, as the USA is, the education system's complete lack of common sense financial literacy is a classic recipe for creating scams. I have a graduate economics degree. I seriously investigated bitcoin and crypto back in '07-'08. There is no "there" there. Cryptocurrencies use an artful abuse of financial terms with their own separate definitions in the cryptoworld. The confusion is intended and part of the scam.
    - greyhair 4y ago
      Rick Scott says there was no right to a free public education in the Constitution. Ponder that for a while.
      - complicitppl 4y ago
        Not sure what your point is other than a snarky comment. Does the Constitution mention public schools at all? No. Ponder that for a while.
- epolanski 4y ago
  > billions of dollars spent in advertising Sunday I was watching Formula 1. Crypto.com Miami GP was the name of the event, starting straight full of crypto.com ads. Watching Inter vs Juventus Italian Cup final: crypto.com event sponsor, with Inter sponsoring Inter fan tokens. It's interesting how desperately crypto space needs $ and euros.
  - throwmeariver1 4y ago
  - vmception 4y ago
    or you're just gullible enough to think crypto.com and Inter fan are "the crypto space". pretty clutch on crypto.com's cringy part, to name themselves crypto dot com. its like they looked at all the people confusing any random bitcoin servicing company for "bitcoin" and was like "you know what would be better than arguing on hackernews about reality? just helping keep confusing them for fun and profit!" one exchange, a highly lucrative one, bought a bunch of sports sponsorships, due to the fact that they already made a bunch of money, and then advertises itself, like every other company with vertically integrated ad space does.
- danjac 4y ago
  Matt Damon at least should never get work again. Except maybe shilling jewellery on PVC.
  - ilammy 4y ago
    Feels good to be on the ‘righteous’ end of canceling people, eh?
    - ryan_lane 4y ago
      Yes, it does, when being on the 'righteous' end means being on the side that doesn't get paid to help scammers scam people.
  - bsenftner 4y ago
    His involvement seriously reduced my impression of him, as in I no longer see integrity in his behavior, more like a skilled actor projecting integrity, and his own being suspicious.
- amelius 4y ago
  There should be a law that currencies are used for legitimate payments for more than X% and otherwise the currencies should be marked as gambling money. How to measure? I don't know, but I'm sure the IRS can come up with something.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    A law where? To the extent that Tether is anywhere, it's in notorious financial law evasion island Grand Cayman. It's already illegal to supply overseas gambling services to Americans (Pokerstars). Quite a lot of the crypto world would arguably be ruled illegal under existing law if it was prosecuted before an American court - or a British one, or many other jurisdictions. It's just that there's so much of it, it moves so fast, and has enough legitimate-looking political cover that it's escaped so far. Here's former UK minister Matt Hancock, for example: https://www.cityam.com/my-mission-is-to-make-the-uk-love-crypto-says-hancock/ https://www.cityam.com/my-mission-is-to-make-the-uk-love-cry...
    - the_lonely_road 4y ago
      It’s not illegal to play Pokerstars in America. Its a states rights issue. Some states allow it and some don’t and the ones that don’t could allow it using their various mechanisms for changing the laws (like California’s props or Florida’s citizen ballots) if they wanted to but they don’t. Probably a strong correlation between lottery revenue and online poker being illegal but that’s just a theory without facts backing it.
    - amelius 4y ago
      I think a ban can work quite well as a deterrent. If ThePiratebay/PopcornTime was not illegal, we wouldn't have Netflix&co. It's not perfect, but I think a ban can be very effective. Also, I'm tired of hearing cryptocurrency-related stories at social events and in podcasts. If it were illegal, I believe people would be more reluctant in spreading these stories.
  - eric_cc 4y ago
    > There should be a law Because what we really need is MORE LAWS and more power for the government!! Think of the children!!
- sgjohnson 4y ago
  > So, no, they don't deserve to lose their money to these assholes. Yes they do. But for reasons other than that. They also typically have extremely poor risk management (or are completely oblivious to it), and more importantly, they are buying a financial instrument they don’t even understand.
- throwawaymaths 4y ago
  >> And this doesn't only apply to crypto, look at how many countries with currency pegs can maintain that when their economy turns down > These assholes need to be prosecuted, fined and put to jail if necessary Who gets put in jail when assholes running a country swindle their people's currency and the peg slips or otherwise they steal from the social wealth of the nation?
- jmyeet 4y ago
  I actually hate people disavowing themselves of responsibility here. While there is definitely some shady stuff in Crypto (particularly NFTs, which seem to be 99% scams), there's a certain level of personal responsibility required here. People saw the meteoric rise of Bitcoin and got a serious case of FOMO. Everyone wanted to be on the next Bitcoin. This, ultimately, is the American Dream: to get rich by doing nothing other than getting lucky and being able to say how smart you are. Not by creating any kind of value. People should be honest and admit (at least to themselves) that they didn't understand what they were investing in let alone believe in it fundamentally. They just wanted to get rich.
  - raiyu 4y ago
    The American dream is to make it through hard work, what you are referring to is simple greed and laziness and it’s been around since humanity attained consciousness.
    - sbarre 4y ago
      > The American dream is to make it through hard work Now that's the actual con, or at least a pipe dream. Hard work is never enough. Luck plays a huge factor but few who get lucky, and then rich, will ever admit to that part.
      - fifticon 4y ago
        It's a minor detail: "through the hard work of OTHERS".
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - bitexploder 4y ago
        I admit it. Many of my peers do. Luck is fickle and hard quantify. Effort and decision making less so. It is at least obvious why people have such a bias.
        4y ago
- woodruffw 4y ago
  There are individual investors who were misled by institutions and grifters. There are also individual investors on this very forum who laughed, taunted, and turned their noses up whenever someone pointed out the fraudulent nature of the entire ecosystem. The latter are not financially illiterate; they just thought (incorrectly) that they could time the scam better than the other little guys. I have correspondingly less sympathy for them.
- complicitppl 4y ago
  I’m not that old, but I’ve already realized that get rich quick schemes sometimes work but ultimately fail for most participants. People who engage in this stuff get very little sympathy from me. They were complicit in an obvious lie because they thought they’d make some easy money.
- FerociousTimes 4y ago
  A fool and his money are soon parted, nonetheless
- more_corn 4y ago
  Yes, but. There were voices of reason and caution the whole time. People would ask me “you know tech stuff what crypto should I invest in”. “None, it’s not investing. It’s speculation” You know how many people listened to me? None of the people who asked me for advice, and got the above advice indicated in any way that it would keep them away. There was a lot of greed pushing the clueless into poor choices. So now who do we blame? Honestly there’s enough to go around.
- eric_cc 4y ago
  > many poorer and financially illeterate people have been tricked > they don't deserve to lose their money Do you not believe that people should be responsible for their actions? It's sad when people make decisions that lead to them losing money. But that's part of freedom: the freedom to fail.
- hnfong 4y ago
someotherperson 4y ago
> If you've been honestly working on the assumption that it is, then you deserve to lose your (real) money to some crypto VCs on an island somewhere This is victim blaming. Nobody deserves to be exploited, robbed or otherwise for any reason.
- JCharante 4y ago
  If you knowingly put money in a scam where you send the previous person 2x the amount they sent and the music stops on you, you deserve it because you know the risk and choose it. So there is a line where it's acceptable to victim blame.
- corndoge 4y ago
  "Deserves" is a word with variable meanings. You learn early on not to touch hot stoves. Do you morally deserve to get burned if you touch the stove anyway? Arguably no, but in the other meaning of "you should've known better", you kinda do deserve it.
  - cto_of_antifa 4y ago
  - rtkwe 4y ago
    The big problem is Tether's minting has driven the market for crypto crazy so even if you've been avoiding holding Tether for longer than it takes to transfer your assets or to buy new assets your holdings are going to be inflated by the fake money injected by Tether's money printer.
  - digianarchist 4y ago
    There's a very natural feedback mechanism to a hot stove. When former world leaders are turning up and crypto conferences and the industry remains largely unregulated, then can you really blame people for investing?
    - sgjohnson 4y ago
frozenport 4y ago
How are VCs making money? They invested $$$ and the company became insolvent? Don't the investors loose?
- gerikson 4y ago
  VCs are just as susceptible to being fooled as anyone else.
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  Only if they're drinking their own koolaid and not constantly cashing out the fresh, real money that new marks bring to them as their stake in the market.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- onion2k 4y ago
  VCs don't make all their money from exits. A lot comes from fund management fees. Investing (someone else's) money in a business and then charging 5% from managing that investment is quite lucrative when the values are high enough.
mmaunder 4y ago
History has shown that dollar pegs last as long as a leader can defer gratification.
EGreg 4y ago
A year ago I advocated this “riskless” strategy on HN… if anyone actually listened to me, would you be up 1,000,000% right now? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26106281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26106281
- eterm 4y ago
  Did you listen to yourself and do that?
- mateuszf 4y ago
  Did you listen?
- wcoenen 4y ago
  Your idea was basically to short tether at high leverage and wait. But margin trading with high leverage isn't free. You are essentially borrowing the money at a very high interest rate. For example, at Kraken the margin cost is currently typically 0.02% per 4 hours. This is not something you want to maintain while waiting for an event that could take years to materialize. And that's for modest leverage (up to 5x), I imagine it's even more expensive for the 100x leverage you were looking for. https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/206161568-What-are-the-fees-opening-and-rollover-for-trading-using-margin- https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/206161568-What-...
  - phire 4y ago
    "Markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you and I can remain solvent"
- namdnay 4y ago
  The main risk is your riskless strategy is that when the whole system blows up, everything you have on your exchange disappears too.
- hluska 4y ago
  If that is meant to be a joke, it’s actually quite funny. Good job. If you meant that seriously, it’s extremely poor quality advice. Leverage is neither free nor cheap. And taking 100% leverage is obscenely risky. Your characterization of it as ‘risk free’ is the most dangerous part. At 100% leverage, small swings could lead to calls you simply cannot afford.
searchableguy 4y ago
I believe tether will be back above .99 and stay there at the end of the week. Free pizza on whoever is wrong.
- cersa8 4y ago
  You're downvoted because people want to see it burn. But yes, the peg is already very close to stable now. Enjoy your pizza's.
davidweatherall 4y ago
I don't understand how you bodge a stable coin startup. Surely you just mint the tokens in exchange for dollars, and then put ~50% of the dollars in zero risk investments (some form of treasury bonds), and then take the 0.5-1% interest per year as your revenue. Tether currently has $81b marketcap so you could be making $400-800m per year doing basically nothing?
- myle 4y ago
  Greediness.
  - draw_down 4y ago
- likpok 4y ago
  It’s hard to find a bank to take your money, since you’re something that rhymes with money laundering. Tether had a bunch of money stolen from them because the money launderer they used turned out to be a crook. It also takes a long time to get this going and there are moderately high costs to a minimally viable financial entity (reporting, compliance). A few years ago they only had a couple billion which makes it hard. And all of that sets aside the allegation that tether has been printing tethers it’s entire life — that it’s basically never been fully backed by dollars.
  - mewse 4y ago
    > something that rhymes with money laundering Oo, sign me up for some "bunny conjuring", please! Alternately, "sunny wandering" and "honey squandering" both sound like they could be delightful ways to pass an afternoon. But I can tell you right now that "funny pondering" is hella overrated.
- closedloop129 4y ago
  A slightly better strategy: You do exactly this, but you don't proof it to anybody. Then there is constant doubt and the price can fall down a bit, e.g. to 0.97. Then, you buy back your stable coins and you make an additional nice profit. As long as there is no other more trusted stable coin demand will increase again and you will regain your market share.
darawk 4y ago
They do have collateral. There has never been any evidence that they don't. The peg is already re-converged. Just as it has quickly every other time this has happened. It reconverges, unlike UST, because they actually redeem your Tether for dollars when you ask.
thkim 4y ago
I think Tether can get away with less than 100% collateralization. At the current market cap of 82bn, even if they are only 20% collateralized, it takes 16.4bn one way movement to deplete their reserve. Is that likely event? Guess it depends, but I think market makers would be more willing to backstop them than UST shitshow. UST has "death spiral" structure that makes MMs less willing to backstop them once it goes on a path, which is exactly what hedge funds attacked against these past few days.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- maxerickson 4y ago
  That would be okay if they called the currency lever.
- phire 4y ago
  All that Tether really need is for enough people to believe that they probably have enough collateral to handle any potential bank run. Those people will buy up discounted tether and prevent the bank run from even happening. Though, the mess with TerraUSD has clearly knocked a bunch of people's confidence in Tether. I wouldn't be entirely surprised to see it crash.
  - mrep 4y ago
    Isn't that what the banks said before their first bank run and then the government had to step in to back peoples deposits to ease their worries. The government isn't backing these deposits.
- lmm 4y ago
  The sharks still smell blood in the water. If there's money to be made on the other side, the other side will be able to get all the capital it needs.
  - ironlake 4y ago
    A lot of people have looked for conspiracy or motivation around the Terra Luna crash, but the real answer is if you can legally make money by making something crash, then someone will make it crash. Terra Luna was a slow antelope on the savanna.
eru 4y ago
Currency pegs and currency boards can work quite well. You just need sufficient assets to cover them. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_board Btw, not only sovereign nations have these issues. Your bank also tries to maintain a peg between one dollar in its account books and one dollar in government money. Similar (but more roundabout) for things like Amazon gift cards. For a country without an established, credible central bank a currency board can be a big economic improvement over trying to issue their own native fiat currency. (Even better from an economic point of view is for the country not to issue a government currency at all, but let the market handle that. When the government is particularly inept, you can see the (black) market trying to fix currency issues even when the government actively tries to prevent that.)
- unyttigfjelltol 4y ago
  No, pegs are nonsense. If you want something USD-denominated, buy USD. The cardinal sin committed was pegging in the first place, which always was doomed to failure because the scale of the effort would attract either a bank run or raid, guarantied. Let's say you're a hedge fund looking for a one-way bet that will profit massively in a crypto crash (that stablecoins can't survive) and has no downside except carrying costs. Enter Tether, Terra, etc. Risk of loss at initial sale of 1, very low because tokens will not increase in value to 1.5 or 2. Profit potential? 100%. Everyone with a dash of creativity and a fund probably already is short these coins and has been for some time. "The Big Short" of 2022.
  - eru 4y ago
    There are only two ways to hold USD: physical cash and database entries at the Fed. The former is really inconvenient, especially if you want to transfer money. The latter is only available to a select few companies. Everything is else at most assets denominated in (= pegged to) USD. Does your critique apply to all these other categories as well? Why or why not?
    - apcragg 4y ago
      "sure, my house's foundation is made of cardboard, but have you considered that the empire state building could also be destroyed in a large enough earthquake?"
Wowfunhappy 4y ago
> If you've been honestly working on the assumption that it is, then you deserve to lose your (real) money to some crypto VCs on an island somewhere. Would you feel the same way about people who loose money to “I’m calling from Microsoft IT”-type scams?
lumost 4y ago
There are so many ponzi schemes and other scams in crypto. In hindsight it shouldn't have been surprising that an unregulated tradable contract scheme would have immediately turned into this. One item that no one has spoken about yet, how much real money is actually tied to Crypto? Some of these coin implosions are as bad as Madoff's mess on paper ($36 billion).
arisAlexis 4y ago
You have proof ?
whatever1 4y ago
I mean Madoffs ponzi scheme at least survived the dot com crash.
GreenPlastic 4y ago
Attorney General of NY looked at their books and found most of the collateral was there, although in the form of commercial paper. The risk is really in which companies debt they hold. If we see a perfect storm of something like 2008 where correlations go to 1 resulting in massive defaults AND a significant number of redemptions then I'd be worried.
azth 4y ago
> The fact that they've been minting billions of tether without collateral You mean like the USD?

shafyy 4y ago

> If you've been honestly working on the assumption that it is, then you deserve to lose your (real) money to some crypto VCs on an island somewhere. The sad reality is that many poorer and financially illeterate people have been tricked by VCs and other grifters into this with billions of dollars spent in advertising. So, no, they don't deserve to lose their money to these assholes. These assholes need to be prosecuted, fined and put to jail if necessary.

sshine 4y ago
> many poorer and financially illeterate people have been tricked I’m sorry, but it’s worse than that. Whenever I’ve said “Tether is a scam waiting to blow up, and the evidence is obvious”, none of my smart peers had anything to say, either. The BTC price is hells high by this fake USD money printer. At least people are collectively waking up. Brrrr.
- tluyben2 4y ago
  The religious (for a lack of better word as it is a religion to believe that cryptocurrencies are inherently better than other assets (outside NFTs) but they do believe that if you read twitter/reddit) people are hodling but all the 'saner' people I know went out in december. There was enough writing on the wall to know that 2022 would not be a good year for some assets (and it's just beginning). Only the real believers are still holding and it's a drama; a friend of mine went 'all in' on Terra and is staunchly 'hodling' because he believes it's the greatest project in finance since humans invented currencies. He has 30+ years work of money in it which is his families money (his brothers and parents gave him their savings to 'invest') etc. But he is not depressed; he firmly believes it is coming back as it's decentralized. There are many of him. MANY. I mean there are also other stories; an acquaintance (he invested in my business with cash in 2018) got out end 2017 with around 60m$ in cash; he was a waiter making minimum wage who borrowed 50k$ from his family who remortgaged their house (not rich people but at least house owners) in 2014 and gambled his families future and accidentally (he was a real believer, but the 'business scams' around blockchain made him a non-believer) gambled right. It's a weird casino. Maybe it is my circle (but I read it on reddit all the time the past 10 years though) but the financially illiterate seem far more likely to 'invest' with borrowed money, do not diversify and put 'everything on red'/all-in kind of thing and then don't know what to do when that goes wrong (lie to their spouses and kids about it). An senior sales guy of my (then) company invested ALL his money and borrowed more (totaling many millions) in a Dutch web stock (worldonline) and lost everything; his wife, son, house, cars; basically life.
  - Animats 4y ago
    There are many of him. MANY. See Reddit's "apecoin" subreddit, which had two suicide threats yesterday.
    - nradov 4y ago
      Don't believe stories you read on Reddit. Most of them are creative writing exercises.
    - tluyben2 4y ago
      Well, if your 'advisors' (usually indicated in reddit/twitter as people 'much smarter than me' by which they mean devs who work on blockchain projects and 'financial gurus' who post a lot of charts with arrows pointing 'in the right direction' (which wasn't hard the past few years as it was generally just 'up' unless Musk posted something)) say it's a sure thing and suddenly you are at the start of a recession with massive inflation and your entire savings wiped out... It is hard to blame them; saying 'it is only money' works when you have money. Luckily there is quite a bit of help and helplines to talk them down.
  - spupe 4y ago
    Yeah, this is the dark side of all this "diamond hands", "to the moon" bullshit. A handful of winners, a majority of losers, and some people going complete bankrupt because they are foolish.
    - arinlen 4y ago
      > Yeah, this is the dark side of all this "diamond hands", "to the moon" bullshit. Also known as "please continue holding the bag".
  - hnbad 4y ago
    You're perfectly describing the sunk cost fallacy. The naifs who overcomitted on a "guaranteed win" investment can't walk back from it because that would mean giving up on a lot (e.g. 50% or more) of their investments, which often as you said isn't money they really had "lying around" (even your retirement fund isn't really disposable once you actually need to retire on it). The failure to achieve the promised growth paradoxically converts them into true believers because they see no way out without admitting they ruined their lives. A lot of crypto grifters (and even mainstream celebrities) have been actively encouraging these people to sink literally all their capital in coins or NFTs with unrealistic promises and FOMO. They did this because they knew it would work and drive up prices enough for them to be able to cash out by dumping their worthless void money on the unwashed masses.
- outside1234 4y ago
  We have been saying it - but have been dismissed as being "anti-crypto"
  - stevekemp 4y ago
    Yeah it's a tricky one. It seems obvious that "digital money" is going to be very useful in a lot of ways, and in the future is almost certain to appear. There was a very brief period when bitcoin might have been the start of such a thing. When companies were adding support for it, and people were spending 200+ bitcoin on pizza, actually doing useful things like transferring money internationally, etc. But these days? It's all speculation, gambling, and HODLing to the moon. Maybe in the future we'll have a cryptocurrency which is actually usable as a currency, spent, and being in circulation, not being mined and hoarded by people who expect 1000000% returns.
    - FeepingCreature 4y ago
      A deflationary currency was never going to be viable as money.
      - ekianjo 4y ago
        there are still bitcoins being mined. where is it deflationary?
        swalsh 4y ago
        To me the issue is the supply of tokens is not correlated to the actual underlying supply of goods and services in the economy. Tokens should be minted/burned according to the fundumentals of the underlying economy. Hard to do with a single digital currency as there is a whole economy. But viable with ERC-20's, which can be turned into micro-currencies. The great thing about ERC20 tokens, is you can swap them pretty effortlessly. And on a chain like Avalanche, it's cheap and scalable.
        mensetmanusman 4y ago
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  > none of my smart peers had anything to say, either. It's because they know. I think everybody knows that crypto is a bubble. I think everybody believes everyone else that buys into it is dumb, financially illiterate, whatever. The crypto market has been propped up and boosted by an influx of people like that, each one knowing it's a bubble, believing everyone else is an idiot... but still wanting a slice of the pie, just in case there's another big wave coming and they will make it rich themselves. It's an interesting study in idk, doublethink? Self-delusion? Wishful thinking?
  - iso1210 4y ago
    It's the greater fool theory. I lauched at friends of my fatherinlaw back in 2018 when they were buying bitcoin at 15k. Obviously it popped. Today it's down 50% on ATH, but it's still more than double it's 2018 bubble level.
    - kgwgk 4y ago
      It's not more than double 15k, is it?
      - iso1210 4y ago
        Yahoo finance says its 30,279.67 at the moment after a collapse in everything over the last week or so.
        kgwgk 4y ago
        You wrote “it's still more than double it's 2018 bubble level”. If you meant “in the future it may be again more than double its 2018 bubble level” you could have phrased it more clearly. The 2018 peak was above 19k, by the way.
    - DebtDeflation 4y ago
      We will almost certainly see pre-2017 prices at some point.
- etherael 4y ago
  I have been saying this for over five years and never had even an attempt at a rebuttal. Most people in crypto with a clue simply accept it as a fact. USDT needs to die for the market to have any sensibility at all. Six years ago daily usdt volumes would not break 3 percent of bitcoin trade volume. Now they routinely break three hundred percent. It is an indisputable scam and needs the flush it so richly deserves. And I say this as somebody pro crypto who honestly wants to see legitimate crypto do what it can for the world. Transparently manipulating this market the way it has for so long now is not doing that. We need real prices.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- alrs 4y ago
  I think you're confusing "smart" for "upper middle class people with gleaming straight teeth."
- bratwurst3000 4y ago
  Yes I thought that so many people that it’s so obvious but they didn’t believe it and still did Invest in crypto. Their FOMO had total control of them. They didn’t want to understand the concept they just wanted to be part of something bigger
- eric_cc 4y ago
  > USD money printer. So we know USD is a scam and manipulated heavily. Learn about The Fed.. > BTC And here we have an alternative. This is one of the primary reasons why BTC is so important.
mdoms 4y ago
They do deserve it.
yread 4y ago
Assholes need to be jailed and we can feel for the greedy people losing their money. On the other hand they wouldn't have shared their gains with us if it went well so they can't expect us to bail them out when it goes bad
- greyhair 4y ago
  This. Exactly this. In some ways, this mirrors the current student debt crisis. Only 13% of the US population holds student debt, and 80% of student debt is held by earners in the upper 20% of income. But suddenly, we are supposed to cancel all that debt. ????? Same thing with the market crash in 2008. Oh, we have to bail out all those banks because otherwise pension funds will lose value. Not close completely, but lose value. So a bunch of people with no hope of ever having a pension have to be taxed to bail out existing pensions (in effect). And then AIG having the gall, after effectively failing, and only being propped up by Federal dollars, complaining ten years after that the government unfairly held back some of their profits because the government backing came with stock holdings to back the loan, and AIG had to buy the stock back. So yeah, Crypto is an issue, but the major banks are also an issue, and people that are stupid (or greedy) about money are an issue.
  - pirate787 4y ago
    Agree. The median student loan burden is very manageable-- less than a new car -- and the issue is manufactured for political purposes on the left to turn out younger voters.
cm2187 4y ago
Every good con relies on greed. The fact that the con artist is a criminal doesn’t make the victim of a con any less greedy. I am thinking of the many crypto fanboys here who have been repeatedly told this is a large ponzi scheme. They had plenty of warnings. I don’t have a huge amount of sympathy for them loosing money. Doesn’t mean the con artists shouldn’t face criminal prosecution (if they broke the law, it’s not a crime to sell tulips to people who think the tulip is worth all of their savings).
- fortran77 4y ago
  “You can’t cheat an honest man.”
CryptoPunk 4y ago
>>The sad reality is that many poorer and financially illeterate people have been tricked by VCs and other grifters into this with billions of dollars spent in advertising. I'm a consumer of tether. I know the risks, and I take a calculated risk in using it for some applications. I perceive almost everything in the space as an experiment, and I'm willing to run that experiment. I personally believe that my sentiment is common among those who use and hold crypto assets. Cryptocurrencies are widely perceived as experimental and subject to large unexpected rice declines, hacks and other risks. That goes for stablecoins too. I don't want you to forcibly prevent people from making any offer they want to me. By doing so, you are violating my right to free association, and assuming you know better than me what's best for me. I am not a child. Maybe we can give people an option to suspend their rights as free citizens, and subject themselves to your political camp's centralized control, and leave every one else alone to decide for themselves, in accordance with the basic principles of liberal democracy. Is that a fair compromise, or are you going to presume large sections of your fellow citizens are not only financially illiterate, but also are too poor in judgment to realize they are better off under the control of people like you?
- rglullis 4y ago
  The problem is one of ethics, though: It's one thing to say "I've used it to move money" and "I believe and trust that they have the reserves they claim to have and I'm willing to hold USDT forever". If you just use USDT as a hot potato, your "calculated risk" is meaningless and you should be calling out that Tether is a fraud.
  - CryptoPunk 4y ago
Rexxar 4y ago
They deserve to lose and those who have 'tricked' them should be prosecuted. We can have both. Culpability of one side doesn't make the other side innocent victims. It's not bad people against good people, it's bad people everywhere in this situation.
- bsenftner 4y ago
  There is also an amount of blame on our government and the shameful treatment of educating society. In a Capitalist driven country, as the USA is, the education system's complete lack of common sense financial literacy is a classic recipe for creating scams. I have a graduate economics degree. I seriously investigated bitcoin and crypto back in '07-'08. There is no "there" there. Cryptocurrencies use an artful abuse of financial terms with their own separate definitions in the cryptoworld. The confusion is intended and part of the scam.
  - greyhair 4y ago
    Rick Scott says there was no right to a free public education in the Constitution. Ponder that for a while.
    - complicitppl 4y ago
      Not sure what your point is other than a snarky comment. Does the Constitution mention public schools at all? No. Ponder that for a while.
epolanski 4y ago
> billions of dollars spent in advertising Sunday I was watching Formula 1. Crypto.com Miami GP was the name of the event, starting straight full of crypto.com ads. Watching Inter vs Juventus Italian Cup final: crypto.com event sponsor, with Inter sponsoring Inter fan tokens. It's interesting how desperately crypto space needs $ and euros.
- throwmeariver1 4y ago
- vmception 4y ago
  or you're just gullible enough to think crypto.com and Inter fan are "the crypto space". pretty clutch on crypto.com's cringy part, to name themselves crypto dot com. its like they looked at all the people confusing any random bitcoin servicing company for "bitcoin" and was like "you know what would be better than arguing on hackernews about reality? just helping keep confusing them for fun and profit!" one exchange, a highly lucrative one, bought a bunch of sports sponsorships, due to the fact that they already made a bunch of money, and then advertises itself, like every other company with vertically integrated ad space does.
danjac 4y ago
Matt Damon at least should never get work again. Except maybe shilling jewellery on PVC.
- ilammy 4y ago
  Feels good to be on the ‘righteous’ end of canceling people, eh?
  - ryan_lane 4y ago
    Yes, it does, when being on the 'righteous' end means being on the side that doesn't get paid to help scammers scam people.
- bsenftner 4y ago
  His involvement seriously reduced my impression of him, as in I no longer see integrity in his behavior, more like a skilled actor projecting integrity, and his own being suspicious.
amelius 4y ago
There should be a law that currencies are used for legitimate payments for more than X% and otherwise the currencies should be marked as gambling money. How to measure? I don't know, but I'm sure the IRS can come up with something.
- pjc50 4y ago
  A law where? To the extent that Tether is anywhere, it's in notorious financial law evasion island Grand Cayman. It's already illegal to supply overseas gambling services to Americans (Pokerstars). Quite a lot of the crypto world would arguably be ruled illegal under existing law if it was prosecuted before an American court - or a British one, or many other jurisdictions. It's just that there's so much of it, it moves so fast, and has enough legitimate-looking political cover that it's escaped so far. Here's former UK minister Matt Hancock, for example: https://www.cityam.com/my-mission-is-to-make-the-uk-love-crypto-says-hancock/ https://www.cityam.com/my-mission-is-to-make-the-uk-love-cry...
  - the_lonely_road 4y ago
    It’s not illegal to play Pokerstars in America. Its a states rights issue. Some states allow it and some don’t and the ones that don’t could allow it using their various mechanisms for changing the laws (like California’s props or Florida’s citizen ballots) if they wanted to but they don’t. Probably a strong correlation between lottery revenue and online poker being illegal but that’s just a theory without facts backing it.
  - amelius 4y ago
    I think a ban can work quite well as a deterrent. If ThePiratebay/PopcornTime was not illegal, we wouldn't have Netflix&co. It's not perfect, but I think a ban can be very effective. Also, I'm tired of hearing cryptocurrency-related stories at social events and in podcasts. If it were illegal, I believe people would be more reluctant in spreading these stories.
- eric_cc 4y ago
  > There should be a law Because what we really need is MORE LAWS and more power for the government!! Think of the children!!
sgjohnson 4y ago
> So, no, they don't deserve to lose their money to these assholes. Yes they do. But for reasons other than that. They also typically have extremely poor risk management (or are completely oblivious to it), and more importantly, they are buying a financial instrument they don’t even understand.
throwawaymaths 4y ago
>> And this doesn't only apply to crypto, look at how many countries with currency pegs can maintain that when their economy turns down > These assholes need to be prosecuted, fined and put to jail if necessary Who gets put in jail when assholes running a country swindle their people's currency and the peg slips or otherwise they steal from the social wealth of the nation?
jmyeet 4y ago
I actually hate people disavowing themselves of responsibility here. While there is definitely some shady stuff in Crypto (particularly NFTs, which seem to be 99% scams), there's a certain level of personal responsibility required here. People saw the meteoric rise of Bitcoin and got a serious case of FOMO. Everyone wanted to be on the next Bitcoin. This, ultimately, is the American Dream: to get rich by doing nothing other than getting lucky and being able to say how smart you are. Not by creating any kind of value. People should be honest and admit (at least to themselves) that they didn't understand what they were investing in let alone believe in it fundamentally. They just wanted to get rich.
- raiyu 4y ago
  The American dream is to make it through hard work, what you are referring to is simple greed and laziness and it’s been around since humanity attained consciousness.
  - sbarre 4y ago
    > The American dream is to make it through hard work Now that's the actual con, or at least a pipe dream. Hard work is never enough. Luck plays a huge factor but few who get lucky, and then rich, will ever admit to that part.
    - fifticon 4y ago
      It's a minor detail: "through the hard work of OTHERS".
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - bitexploder 4y ago
      I admit it. Many of my peers do. Luck is fickle and hard quantify. Effort and decision making less so. It is at least obvious why people have such a bias.
      - 4y ago
woodruffw 4y ago
There are individual investors who were misled by institutions and grifters. There are also individual investors on this very forum who laughed, taunted, and turned their noses up whenever someone pointed out the fraudulent nature of the entire ecosystem. The latter are not financially illiterate; they just thought (incorrectly) that they could time the scam better than the other little guys. I have correspondingly less sympathy for them.
complicitppl 4y ago
I’m not that old, but I’ve already realized that get rich quick schemes sometimes work but ultimately fail for most participants. People who engage in this stuff get very little sympathy from me. They were complicit in an obvious lie because they thought they’d make some easy money.
FerociousTimes 4y ago
A fool and his money are soon parted, nonetheless
more_corn 4y ago
Yes, but. There were voices of reason and caution the whole time. People would ask me “you know tech stuff what crypto should I invest in”. “None, it’s not investing. It’s speculation” You know how many people listened to me? None of the people who asked me for advice, and got the above advice indicated in any way that it would keep them away. There was a lot of greed pushing the clueless into poor choices. So now who do we blame? Honestly there’s enough to go around.
eric_cc 4y ago
> many poorer and financially illeterate people have been tricked > they don't deserve to lose their money Do you not believe that people should be responsible for their actions? It's sad when people make decisions that lead to them losing money. But that's part of freedom: the freedom to fail.
hnfong 4y ago

someotherperson 4y ago

> If you've been honestly working on the assumption that it is, then you deserve to lose your (real) money to some crypto VCs on an island somewhere This is victim blaming. Nobody deserves to be exploited, robbed or otherwise for any reason.

JCharante 4y ago
If you knowingly put money in a scam where you send the previous person 2x the amount they sent and the music stops on you, you deserve it because you know the risk and choose it. So there is a line where it's acceptable to victim blame.
corndoge 4y ago
"Deserves" is a word with variable meanings. You learn early on not to touch hot stoves. Do you morally deserve to get burned if you touch the stove anyway? Arguably no, but in the other meaning of "you should've known better", you kinda do deserve it.
- cto_of_antifa 4y ago
- rtkwe 4y ago
  The big problem is Tether's minting has driven the market for crypto crazy so even if you've been avoiding holding Tether for longer than it takes to transfer your assets or to buy new assets your holdings are going to be inflated by the fake money injected by Tether's money printer.
- digianarchist 4y ago
  There's a very natural feedback mechanism to a hot stove. When former world leaders are turning up and crypto conferences and the industry remains largely unregulated, then can you really blame people for investing?
  - sgjohnson 4y ago

frozenport 4y ago

How are VCs making money? They invested $$$ and the company became insolvent? Don't the investors loose?

gerikson 4y ago
VCs are just as susceptible to being fooled as anyone else.
adhesive_wombat 4y ago
Only if they're drinking their own koolaid and not constantly cashing out the fresh, real money that new marks bring to them as their stake in the market.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
onion2k 4y ago
VCs don't make all their money from exits. A lot comes from fund management fees. Investing (someone else's) money in a business and then charging 5% from managing that investment is quite lucrative when the values are high enough.

mmaunder 4y ago

History has shown that dollar pegs last as long as a leader can defer gratification.

EGreg 4y ago

A year ago I advocated this “riskless” strategy on HN… if anyone actually listened to me, would you be up 1,000,000% right now? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26106281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26106281

eterm 4y ago
Did you listen to yourself and do that?
mateuszf 4y ago
Did you listen?
wcoenen 4y ago
Your idea was basically to short tether at high leverage and wait. But margin trading with high leverage isn't free. You are essentially borrowing the money at a very high interest rate. For example, at Kraken the margin cost is currently typically 0.02% per 4 hours. This is not something you want to maintain while waiting for an event that could take years to materialize. And that's for modest leverage (up to 5x), I imagine it's even more expensive for the 100x leverage you were looking for. https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/206161568-What-are-the-fees-opening-and-rollover-for-trading-using-margin- https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/206161568-What-...
- phire 4y ago
  "Markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you and I can remain solvent"
namdnay 4y ago
The main risk is your riskless strategy is that when the whole system blows up, everything you have on your exchange disappears too.
hluska 4y ago
If that is meant to be a joke, it’s actually quite funny. Good job. If you meant that seriously, it’s extremely poor quality advice. Leverage is neither free nor cheap. And taking 100% leverage is obscenely risky. Your characterization of it as ‘risk free’ is the most dangerous part. At 100% leverage, small swings could lead to calls you simply cannot afford.

searchableguy 4y ago

I believe tether will be back above .99 and stay there at the end of the week. Free pizza on whoever is wrong.

cersa8 4y ago
You're downvoted because people want to see it burn. But yes, the peg is already very close to stable now. Enjoy your pizza's.

davidweatherall 4y ago

I don't understand how you bodge a stable coin startup. Surely you just mint the tokens in exchange for dollars, and then put ~50% of the dollars in zero risk investments (some form of treasury bonds), and then take the 0.5-1% interest per year as your revenue. Tether currently has $81b marketcap so you could be making $400-800m per year doing basically nothing?

myle 4y ago
Greediness.
- draw_down 4y ago
likpok 4y ago
It’s hard to find a bank to take your money, since you’re something that rhymes with money laundering. Tether had a bunch of money stolen from them because the money launderer they used turned out to be a crook. It also takes a long time to get this going and there are moderately high costs to a minimally viable financial entity (reporting, compliance). A few years ago they only had a couple billion which makes it hard. And all of that sets aside the allegation that tether has been printing tethers it’s entire life — that it’s basically never been fully backed by dollars.
- mewse 4y ago
  > something that rhymes with money laundering Oo, sign me up for some "bunny conjuring", please! Alternately, "sunny wandering" and "honey squandering" both sound like they could be delightful ways to pass an afternoon. But I can tell you right now that "funny pondering" is hella overrated.
closedloop129 4y ago
A slightly better strategy: You do exactly this, but you don't proof it to anybody. Then there is constant doubt and the price can fall down a bit, e.g. to 0.97. Then, you buy back your stable coins and you make an additional nice profit. As long as there is no other more trusted stable coin demand will increase again and you will regain your market share.

darawk 4y ago

They do have collateral. There has never been any evidence that they don't. The peg is already re-converged. Just as it has quickly every other time this has happened. It reconverges, unlike UST, because they actually redeem your Tether for dollars when you ask.

thkim 4y ago

I think Tether can get away with less than 100% collateralization. At the current market cap of 82bn, even if they are only 20% collateralized, it takes 16.4bn one way movement to deplete their reserve. Is that likely event? Guess it depends, but I think market makers would be more willing to backstop them than UST shitshow. UST has "death spiral" structure that makes MMs less willing to backstop them once it goes on a path, which is exactly what hedge funds attacked against these past few days.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
maxerickson 4y ago
That would be okay if they called the currency lever.
phire 4y ago
All that Tether really need is for enough people to believe that they probably have enough collateral to handle any potential bank run. Those people will buy up discounted tether and prevent the bank run from even happening. Though, the mess with TerraUSD has clearly knocked a bunch of people's confidence in Tether. I wouldn't be entirely surprised to see it crash.
- mrep 4y ago
  Isn't that what the banks said before their first bank run and then the government had to step in to back peoples deposits to ease their worries. The government isn't backing these deposits.
lmm 4y ago
The sharks still smell blood in the water. If there's money to be made on the other side, the other side will be able to get all the capital it needs.
- ironlake 4y ago
  A lot of people have looked for conspiracy or motivation around the Terra Luna crash, but the real answer is if you can legally make money by making something crash, then someone will make it crash. Terra Luna was a slow antelope on the savanna.

eru 4y ago

Currency pegs and currency boards can work quite well. You just need sufficient assets to cover them. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_board Btw, not only sovereign nations have these issues. Your bank also tries to maintain a peg between one dollar in its account books and one dollar in government money. Similar (but more roundabout) for things like Amazon gift cards. For a country without an established, credible central bank a currency board can be a big economic improvement over trying to issue their own native fiat currency. (Even better from an economic point of view is for the country not to issue a government currency at all, but let the market handle that. When the government is particularly inept, you can see the (black) market trying to fix currency issues even when the government actively tries to prevent that.)

unyttigfjelltol 4y ago
No, pegs are nonsense. If you want something USD-denominated, buy USD. The cardinal sin committed was pegging in the first place, which always was doomed to failure because the scale of the effort would attract either a bank run or raid, guarantied. Let's say you're a hedge fund looking for a one-way bet that will profit massively in a crypto crash (that stablecoins can't survive) and has no downside except carrying costs. Enter Tether, Terra, etc. Risk of loss at initial sale of 1, very low because tokens will not increase in value to 1.5 or 2. Profit potential? 100%. Everyone with a dash of creativity and a fund probably already is short these coins and has been for some time. "The Big Short" of 2022.
- eru 4y ago
  There are only two ways to hold USD: physical cash and database entries at the Fed. The former is really inconvenient, especially if you want to transfer money. The latter is only available to a select few companies. Everything is else at most assets denominated in (= pegged to) USD. Does your critique apply to all these other categories as well? Why or why not?
  - apcragg 4y ago
    "sure, my house's foundation is made of cardboard, but have you considered that the empire state building could also be destroyed in a large enough earthquake?"

Wowfunhappy 4y ago

> If you've been honestly working on the assumption that it is, then you deserve to lose your (real) money to some crypto VCs on an island somewhere. Would you feel the same way about people who loose money to “I’m calling from Microsoft IT”-type scams?

lumost 4y ago

There are so many ponzi schemes and other scams in crypto. In hindsight it shouldn't have been surprising that an unregulated tradable contract scheme would have immediately turned into this. One item that no one has spoken about yet, how much real money is actually tied to Crypto? Some of these coin implosions are as bad as Madoff's mess on paper ($36 billion).

arisAlexis 4y ago

You have proof ?

whatever1 4y ago

I mean Madoffs ponzi scheme at least survived the dot com crash.

GreenPlastic 4y ago

Attorney General of NY looked at their books and found most of the collateral was there, although in the form of commercial paper. The risk is really in which companies debt they hold. If we see a perfect storm of something like 2008 where correlations go to 1 resulting in massive defaults AND a significant number of redemptions then I'd be worried.

azth 4y ago

> The fact that they've been minting billions of tether without collateral You mean like the USD?