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> "This morning CET, a former Ledger Employee fell victim to a phishing attack that gained access to their NPMJS account." Ouch. A _former_ employee had active

> "This morning CET, a former Ledger Employee fell victim to a phishing attack that gained access to their NPMJS account." Ouch. A _former_ employee had active credentials to phish for. > "@Tether_to has frozen the bad actor’s USDT." Wasn't like, >30% of the point of crypto to not allow people to do this sort of high-level/centralized freezing?

bastawhiz 3y ago
> Wasn't like, >30% of the point of crypto to not allow people to do this sort of high-level/centralized freezing? I mean, unlimited Tether can be created or destroyed at the whim of some guy with a big button somewhere. The promise of crypto being the embodiment of true distributed governance went out the window with USDT ages ago.
tock 3y ago
Everyone using fiat backed centralised stablecoins these days like USDT and USDC. Not only do they have blacklists but they can also burn your balance + they are fully upgradeable aka they can add/remove any functionality they want any time :p The blacklists need to exist as per regulations though.
rdl 3y ago
Tether/USDC and other centralized stablecoins are really "their own thing", not "crypto" in the cypherpunk sense.
mattwilsonn888 3y ago
You can have gradations of control. USDT and USDC are centrally managed. We used to have DAI, which was fully decentralized and over-collatoralized by Ethereum tokens (the native currency of the platform DAI is rooted on) - but the founder mysteriously died as the DAO was taken over and made to begin collateralizing DAI against USDC and USDT, ironically. It is a shame how far crypto has fallen culturally that this stablecoin business is some niche story. Most people are in it for the money, but many good people are not.
- earthboundkid 3y ago
  There is no possible way that USDT is backed one-to-one. It just isn't. If it were, it would have a simple audit trail that they would publish. They don't because it isn't. It's a scam that will at some point unravel, and everyone will lose their shirts because of "many good people" lol.
  - chrisco255 3y ago
    They do post audits on the regular: https://tether.to/en/transparency/#reports https://tether.to/en/transparency/#reports
  - rewtraw 3y ago
    It's possibly backed greater than 1:1. Tether likely cleaned up their operations over the past few years, but the "Tether Truthers" are still anxious about fraud. Even more transparency is welcome of course. > Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick on CNBC: > "I'm a big fan of this stablecoin called Tether...I hold their treasuries. So I keep their treasuries, and they have a lot of treasuries. They're over $90 billion now, so I'm a big fan of Tether." https://twitter.com/leomschwartz/status/1734694800019063207 https://twitter.com/leomschwartz/status/1734694800019063207 https://tether.to/en/transparency/#usdt https://tether.to/en/transparency/#usdt > Tether also reported all time high excess reserves of $2.44 billion. https://www.theblock.co/post/230241/tether-attestation-report-q1-2023 https://www.theblock.co/post/230241/tether-attestation-repor...
- chrisco255 3y ago
  I don't think MakerDAO ever integrated USDT as collateral, but they did integrate USDC. It's unfortunate DAI is not fully decentralized, but the best fully decentralized stable coin efforts (like RAI and LUSD) often suffer from a capital efficiency problem. I think it's fine to have a spectrum of centralized assets and decentralized assets represented as tokens. Blockchains are public, permissionless, ledgers.
- aftbit 3y ago
  Hold on what? I missed all of this MakerDAO drama. The founder died and now assets are collatoralized by USDT instead of ETH? Looks like at least Some links I found for further reading: https://cointelegraph.com/news/makerdao-co-founder-nikolai-mushegian-dies-at-29-in-puerto-rico https://cointelegraph.com/news/makerdao-co-founder-nikolai-m... https://maker.defiexplore.com/stats https://maker.defiexplore.com/stats
chrisco255 3y ago
Tokens are fully programmable, so you can encode whatever logic you want in them, including freezing if you want that functionality. This is mainly done in dollar-backed stable coins. The base level assets, like ETH and BTC, cannot be frozen like this, although centralized exchanges will often blacklist addresses (and the chain of custody) involved in major exploits.
matheusmoreira 3y ago
That was the point, yes. The whole problem is people reinvented the entire centralized banking system on top of crypto. Stuff like USDT should not even exist, people were supposed to adopt crypto wholesale and only convert to fiat currency to pay taxes until the government caved and allowed paying taxes in crypto.

bastawhiz 3y ago

> Wasn't like, >30% of the point of crypto to not allow people to do this sort of high-level/centralized freezing? I mean, unlimited Tether can be created or destroyed at the whim of some guy with a big button somewhere. The promise of crypto being the embodiment of true distributed governance went out the window with USDT ages ago.

tock 3y ago

Everyone using fiat backed centralised stablecoins these days like USDT and USDC. Not only do they have blacklists but they can also burn your balance + they are fully upgradeable aka they can add/remove any functionality they want any time :p The blacklists need to exist as per regulations though.

rdl 3y ago

Tether/USDC and other centralized stablecoins are really "their own thing", not "crypto" in the cypherpunk sense.

mattwilsonn888 3y ago

You can have gradations of control. USDT and USDC are centrally managed. We used to have DAI, which was fully decentralized and over-collatoralized by Ethereum tokens (the native currency of the platform DAI is rooted on) - but the founder mysteriously died as the DAO was taken over and made to begin collateralizing DAI against USDC and USDT, ironically. It is a shame how far crypto has fallen culturally that this stablecoin business is some niche story. Most people are in it for the money, but many good people are not.

earthboundkid 3y ago
There is no possible way that USDT is backed one-to-one. It just isn't. If it were, it would have a simple audit trail that they would publish. They don't because it isn't. It's a scam that will at some point unravel, and everyone will lose their shirts because of "many good people" lol.
- chrisco255 3y ago
  They do post audits on the regular: https://tether.to/en/transparency/#reports https://tether.to/en/transparency/#reports
- rewtraw 3y ago
  It's possibly backed greater than 1:1. Tether likely cleaned up their operations over the past few years, but the "Tether Truthers" are still anxious about fraud. Even more transparency is welcome of course. > Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick on CNBC: > "I'm a big fan of this stablecoin called Tether...I hold their treasuries. So I keep their treasuries, and they have a lot of treasuries. They're over $90 billion now, so I'm a big fan of Tether." https://twitter.com/leomschwartz/status/1734694800019063207 https://twitter.com/leomschwartz/status/1734694800019063207 https://tether.to/en/transparency/#usdt https://tether.to/en/transparency/#usdt > Tether also reported all time high excess reserves of $2.44 billion. https://www.theblock.co/post/230241/tether-attestation-report-q1-2023 https://www.theblock.co/post/230241/tether-attestation-repor...
chrisco255 3y ago
I don't think MakerDAO ever integrated USDT as collateral, but they did integrate USDC. It's unfortunate DAI is not fully decentralized, but the best fully decentralized stable coin efforts (like RAI and LUSD) often suffer from a capital efficiency problem. I think it's fine to have a spectrum of centralized assets and decentralized assets represented as tokens. Blockchains are public, permissionless, ledgers.
aftbit 3y ago
Hold on what? I missed all of this MakerDAO drama. The founder died and now assets are collatoralized by USDT instead of ETH? Looks like at least Some links I found for further reading: https://cointelegraph.com/news/makerdao-co-founder-nikolai-mushegian-dies-at-29-in-puerto-rico https://cointelegraph.com/news/makerdao-co-founder-nikolai-m... https://maker.defiexplore.com/stats https://maker.defiexplore.com/stats

chrisco255 3y ago

Tokens are fully programmable, so you can encode whatever logic you want in them, including freezing if you want that functionality. This is mainly done in dollar-backed stable coins. The base level assets, like ETH and BTC, cannot be frozen like this, although centralized exchanges will often blacklist addresses (and the chain of custody) involved in major exploits.

matheusmoreira 3y ago

That was the point, yes. The whole problem is people reinvented the entire centralized banking system on top of crypto. Stuff like USDT should not even exist, people were supposed to adopt crypto wholesale and only convert to fiat currency to pay taxes until the government caved and allowed paying taxes in crypto.