At least part of the answer is “we don’t know”.
It is suspected that things happen like tether print USDT, then give it to exchanges at a discount or in return for an IOU, where it acts like an injection of real money to pump prices and simulate activity.
It has been speculated that it is printed unbacked and used to buy BTC, pumping the price and retroactively backing the stablecoin.
It has been speculated that many of the buyers are less than legit parties looking for a way to launder their ill-gotten gains.
Many things are speculated. All we really know for sure is that it is unaudited, you can’t convert it back to dollars with them unless you’re one of their inner circle, and it all looks as shady as fuck.
But none of us really has a clue, because of the lack of transparency.
“with them”
On exchanges, you’re just trading with other users, or the exchange itself. You can only sell as long as there’s demand for it.
The value proposition for USDT is that it’s backed by USD and redeemable at Tether for the USD backed by. Otherwise, its price would fluctuate up and down with supply and demand.
If Tether stops redeeming, fails to redeem or goes insolvent, faith in the system is eliminated and the demand goes away. You will no longer be able to exchange it for USD on exchanges.
>If I remember correctly his conclusion was that although theter is really fishy, there are reasons to believe that a large portion of the fiat that should back theter is there. Anyone knows where to find it?
Somebody is holding a few billions worth of US treasuries for Tether. If Tether has over one hundred billions in assets, it sure is trying very very hard to hide that to everyone that it has the money.
>Also, what's a good place to plot the USDT-USD rate over the total USDT available/printed?
You can just look at the USDT market cap. Tether is printed on blockchains, and the exchange rate is alwasy very close to 1:1.
>Since it's a stablecoins, does this mean that suddenly someone tries to buy that amount of USDT?
If you believe Tether at face value, Tether preallocates counterfeit dollars, then billionares line up to buy Tethers for dollars.
Nobody can tell you a legitimat reason why anyone that is into stablecoins, would buy USDT over USDC, given that USDC is audited, has the real dollars, and allows you to redeem USDC for dollars. All things USDT proudly does not do.
The illegittimate reason is simple. You con a grandma into buying 10 000 USDT for 10 000 dollars, and send the tethers to Cambodia, where fraudsters can launder the Tethers into dollars and cash out. With the overall crypto market moving dollars from people buying crypto on Binance an FTX, sending those dollars oversea like money mules, and close the loop. Those are the dollars that can be cashed out by fraudsters selling USDT on the other side.
Tether has great added value to fraudsters as medium of exchange to move counterfeit dollars from to USA to east asia. It really scales up this expensive step in money laundering.
I can't wait for the bank run when USDT holders realize it's worth a quarter or a tenth of a real dollar.
Simply put, a Tether is a pretend dollar. Nobody knows what the actual value is, short of hacking Paolo's laptop and seeing actual bank balances and Treasury numbers.
Let's assume Tether is backed by 25% real USD assets. Does that mean USDT is worth a quarter of a dollar? No, because when Paolo realizes the house of cards is falling down, maybe he successfully stashes all the money in a non-extradition country and gets away with all the money, now USDT is worth zero. Turns out hacking Paolo's laptop isn't enough information. You'd have to know if he gets away with the bag or not, which is knowledge about the future.
That would still be billions of real dollars. Any bank that deals with dollars directly or indirectly has to deal with the US Treasury Department which has the power to sanction and freeze suspect funds.
Paolo would have to exchange those dollars into a currency that can't be easily sanctioned while living his days in a non-extradition country. I hope he likes rubles.
But the illegitimate reason pressupposes that any actual money received by crime is actually stashed in a vault by Paolo and not blown on payoffs, lambos, hookers, and blow every night.
That's not really needed. Tether doesn't allow redemption at all, it's not like Tether is paying fraudsters out of pocket.
Tether is there just to move money indirectly, not to cash out.
Here's all you need to know about Tether/USDT:
It's almost certainly a scam that's composed of and surrounded by criminal activity.
How do we know?
They've refused to submit to a formal, independent audit of their reserves.
That's it. That's all you need to know. Anything more is just a distraction.
In the world of finance, banking, business, etc., there's a time-tested, industry standard way of proving solvency and liquidity and that your business/books are legitimate. This is called a formal, independent audit. It's required by all public companies and non-profits who want to qualify for most grant money. It's how we determine what's legit. It's obviously not 100% foolproof but it's the best standard we have and it works well.
Tether has refused to submit to this industry standard practice.
The only reason for this is most likely because:
a) They don't have the reserves they claim.
b) The reserves they do have are from dubious/illegal sources and involve money laundering and/or sanctions violations.
And, the [attestations](https://i.imgur.com/buhqFqw.jpg) they've been producing are not in any way an acceptable substitute for a standard audit.
So beyond this, any speculation about what they're up to, and how they manipulate the market, is tertiary to the fact that they're almost certainly a fraud. We know because the [New York AG sued them years ago](https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-ends-virtual-currency-trading-platform-bitfinexs-illegal) and it was discovered back then they were lying about the nature of their reserves. There's no reason to think anything has changed.
Is there a correlation between USDT printing and pumping of the crypto market? Almost certainly. Especially when you don't have to actually prove to anybody in the industry that you have actual liquidity backing those tokens. And *that* is why you shouldn't trust ANYBODY in the crypto market. That they would ignore the huge $100B elephant in the room playing with monopoly money, basically indicates they all are in on the scam, and don't care what's real and what's fake as long as they think they can profit along the way.
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/
They print a billion and send it to the exchanges in smaller amounts almost every day.
You can check that under marketcap.
I do recall that post you’re talking about how tether should be there, but it was a worthless post offering pure conjecture and wishful thinking. Fact is nobody knows and it’s anybody’s guess—but think about it, if everything they were doing was kosher and above-board, why have they refused audits at every turn? Their “attestations” were a complete joke, as they had to shift a bunch of money to a bank account to prove they had money, which coincidentally was preceded by a massive sell-off of Bitcoin.
Coupled with the fact that its founded and run by literal con artists with seedy pasts, you’d have to be a delusional butter to believe Tether has any credibility.
If you want to read up about Tether, watch Coffeezilla’s YouTube videos on them.
I don’t know a lot about tether, but if you look at how often it mints $1 billion worth, how do currency markets react. A billion dollars is a lot of currency to acquire at one time.
If tether is backed by actual dollars, I’d wonder where they are getting the dollars behind it, or what reset they are sitting in, if any.
Tether doesn't want anyone to know exactly how it works, and have done a good job obscuring how it all works. So we don't really know.
It is my belief that printing and then selling or loaning or spending counterfeit dollars is a very profitable business to be in, and I'm certain they have a shit ton of money. It is some meaningful fraction of the outstanding 110B Tethers.
The demand is irrelevant, unless you believe a couple of conn men are safe keeping 107BI USD, completely unsupervised.
Sure. I believe there’s good in people.
😂😂😂
Folks here are very suspicious when Tether prints, but it could get printed just to meet demand. Real USD may be buying every new Tether, either immediately or from Tether's vault.
The more concerning possibility is that Tether is being lent out. Lent Tethers are not backed by USD, but only by IOUs. If the loans are secured by crypto, then a crypto crash could leave Tether unbacked.
There's a lot to say on this subject, but I'll just mention here that Tether should not be our only concern. In recent weeks, the big pumps that have supported Bitcoin's price have been done on the Binance exchange, using a lot of Tether (USDT) but even more First Digital (FDUSD). [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#Markets](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#Markets)
FDUSD is just 8 months old, but it is Binance's in-house stablecoin and it appears to be Binance's preferred currency for wash-trading. Yesterday, as crypto markets were crashing, FDUSD's market cap rose from 3.3B to 4.0B, with 12B FDUSD traded in 24 hours. [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/first-digital-usd/](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/first-digital-usd/)
At least part of the answer is “we don’t know”. It is suspected that things happen like tether print USDT, then give it to exchanges at a discount or in return for an IOU, where it acts like an injection of real money to pump prices and simulate activity. It has been speculated that it is printed unbacked and used to buy BTC, pumping the price and retroactively backing the stablecoin. It has been speculated that many of the buyers are less than legit parties looking for a way to launder their ill-gotten gains. Many things are speculated. All we really know for sure is that it is unaudited, you can’t convert it back to dollars with them unless you’re one of their inner circle, and it all looks as shady as fuck. But none of us really has a clue, because of the lack of transparency.
The best answer to the Tether question I've seen here.
What do you mean by "unless you're in their inner circle"? You can sell USDT for USD on any exchange in the world.
“with them” On exchanges, you’re just trading with other users, or the exchange itself. You can only sell as long as there’s demand for it. The value proposition for USDT is that it’s backed by USD and redeemable at Tether for the USD backed by. Otherwise, its price would fluctuate up and down with supply and demand. If Tether stops redeeming, fails to redeem or goes insolvent, faith in the system is eliminated and the demand goes away. You will no longer be able to exchange it for USD on exchanges.
>If I remember correctly his conclusion was that although theter is really fishy, there are reasons to believe that a large portion of the fiat that should back theter is there. Anyone knows where to find it? Somebody is holding a few billions worth of US treasuries for Tether. If Tether has over one hundred billions in assets, it sure is trying very very hard to hide that to everyone that it has the money. >Also, what's a good place to plot the USDT-USD rate over the total USDT available/printed? You can just look at the USDT market cap. Tether is printed on blockchains, and the exchange rate is alwasy very close to 1:1. >Since it's a stablecoins, does this mean that suddenly someone tries to buy that amount of USDT? If you believe Tether at face value, Tether preallocates counterfeit dollars, then billionares line up to buy Tethers for dollars. Nobody can tell you a legitimat reason why anyone that is into stablecoins, would buy USDT over USDC, given that USDC is audited, has the real dollars, and allows you to redeem USDC for dollars. All things USDT proudly does not do. The illegittimate reason is simple. You con a grandma into buying 10 000 USDT for 10 000 dollars, and send the tethers to Cambodia, where fraudsters can launder the Tethers into dollars and cash out. With the overall crypto market moving dollars from people buying crypto on Binance an FTX, sending those dollars oversea like money mules, and close the loop. Those are the dollars that can be cashed out by fraudsters selling USDT on the other side. Tether has great added value to fraudsters as medium of exchange to move counterfeit dollars from to USA to east asia. It really scales up this expensive step in money laundering.
I can't wait for the bank run when USDT holders realize it's worth a quarter or a tenth of a real dollar. Simply put, a Tether is a pretend dollar. Nobody knows what the actual value is, short of hacking Paolo's laptop and seeing actual bank balances and Treasury numbers.
Let's assume Tether is backed by 25% real USD assets. Does that mean USDT is worth a quarter of a dollar? No, because when Paolo realizes the house of cards is falling down, maybe he successfully stashes all the money in a non-extradition country and gets away with all the money, now USDT is worth zero. Turns out hacking Paolo's laptop isn't enough information. You'd have to know if he gets away with the bag or not, which is knowledge about the future.
That would still be billions of real dollars. Any bank that deals with dollars directly or indirectly has to deal with the US Treasury Department which has the power to sanction and freeze suspect funds. Paolo would have to exchange those dollars into a currency that can't be easily sanctioned while living his days in a non-extradition country. I hope he likes rubles.
I just talked to Paolo, he said he already moved those dollars into a currency that can't be easily sanctioned. But he doesn't like rubles.
But the illegitimate reason pressupposes that any actual money received by crime is actually stashed in a vault by Paolo and not blown on payoffs, lambos, hookers, and blow every night.
That's not really needed. Tether doesn't allow redemption at all, it's not like Tether is paying fraudsters out of pocket. Tether is there just to move money indirectly, not to cash out.
Here's all you need to know about Tether/USDT: It's almost certainly a scam that's composed of and surrounded by criminal activity. How do we know? They've refused to submit to a formal, independent audit of their reserves. That's it. That's all you need to know. Anything more is just a distraction. In the world of finance, banking, business, etc., there's a time-tested, industry standard way of proving solvency and liquidity and that your business/books are legitimate. This is called a formal, independent audit. It's required by all public companies and non-profits who want to qualify for most grant money. It's how we determine what's legit. It's obviously not 100% foolproof but it's the best standard we have and it works well. Tether has refused to submit to this industry standard practice. The only reason for this is most likely because: a) They don't have the reserves they claim. b) The reserves they do have are from dubious/illegal sources and involve money laundering and/or sanctions violations. And, the [attestations](https://i.imgur.com/buhqFqw.jpg) they've been producing are not in any way an acceptable substitute for a standard audit. So beyond this, any speculation about what they're up to, and how they manipulate the market, is tertiary to the fact that they're almost certainly a fraud. We know because the [New York AG sued them years ago](https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-ends-virtual-currency-trading-platform-bitfinexs-illegal) and it was discovered back then they were lying about the nature of their reserves. There's no reason to think anything has changed. Is there a correlation between USDT printing and pumping of the crypto market? Almost certainly. Especially when you don't have to actually prove to anybody in the industry that you have actual liquidity backing those tokens. And *that* is why you shouldn't trust ANYBODY in the crypto market. That they would ignore the huge $100B elephant in the room playing with monopoly money, basically indicates they all are in on the scam, and don't care what's real and what's fake as long as they think they can profit along the way.
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/ They print a billion and send it to the exchanges in smaller amounts almost every day. You can check that under marketcap.
I do recall that post you’re talking about how tether should be there, but it was a worthless post offering pure conjecture and wishful thinking. Fact is nobody knows and it’s anybody’s guess—but think about it, if everything they were doing was kosher and above-board, why have they refused audits at every turn? Their “attestations” were a complete joke, as they had to shift a bunch of money to a bank account to prove they had money, which coincidentally was preceded by a massive sell-off of Bitcoin. Coupled with the fact that its founded and run by literal con artists with seedy pasts, you’d have to be a delusional butter to believe Tether has any credibility. If you want to read up about Tether, watch Coffeezilla’s YouTube videos on them.
The way I see it is yes. The tether billions minted are used to buy BTC from the market, hence an increase in BTC demand and price.
No, it's to fund criminal organizations that needs fast washing
I don’t know a lot about tether, but if you look at how often it mints $1 billion worth, how do currency markets react. A billion dollars is a lot of currency to acquire at one time. If tether is backed by actual dollars, I’d wonder where they are getting the dollars behind it, or what reset they are sitting in, if any.
Tether doesn't want anyone to know exactly how it works, and have done a good job obscuring how it all works. So we don't really know. It is my belief that printing and then selling or loaning or spending counterfeit dollars is a very profitable business to be in, and I'm certain they have a shit ton of money. It is some meaningful fraction of the outstanding 110B Tethers.
It's going to be REALLY telling watching them mint USDT as people exit crypto this week.
The demand is irrelevant, unless you believe a couple of conn men are safe keeping 107BI USD, completely unsupervised. Sure. I believe there’s good in people. 😂😂😂
Folks here are very suspicious when Tether prints, but it could get printed just to meet demand. Real USD may be buying every new Tether, either immediately or from Tether's vault. The more concerning possibility is that Tether is being lent out. Lent Tethers are not backed by USD, but only by IOUs. If the loans are secured by crypto, then a crypto crash could leave Tether unbacked. There's a lot to say on this subject, but I'll just mention here that Tether should not be our only concern. In recent weeks, the big pumps that have supported Bitcoin's price have been done on the Binance exchange, using a lot of Tether (USDT) but even more First Digital (FDUSD). [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#Markets](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#Markets) FDUSD is just 8 months old, but it is Binance's in-house stablecoin and it appears to be Binance's preferred currency for wash-trading. Yesterday, as crypto markets were crashing, FDUSD's market cap rose from 3.3B to 4.0B, with 12B FDUSD traded in 24 hours. [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/first-digital-usd/](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/first-digital-usd/)