There are also rumors that Deltec has been hacked, which is the bank Tether supposedly uses to "back" the Tether stablecoin. Supposedly there is one dollar for each tether, but its looking more and more like that is not the case.
"Contrary to online speculation, there was no finding that Tether ever issued tethers [USDT] without backing, or to manipulate crypto prices," said Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor.[1]
3. The next day, November 2, 2018, Tether made the first of five transfers ultimately
totaling $475 million from its bank account at Deltec Bank to Bitfinex’s account at Deltec Bank.
At the same time, a corresponding transfer was made from Bitfinex’s account at Crypto Capital
to Tether’s account at Crypto Capital via ledger entry Bitfinex also “purchased” 150 million
tethers by transferring $150 million in funds held at Bitfinex’s Crypto Capital account to
Tether’s account at Crypto Capital. These transfers were not disclosed.
44. And so, as of November 2, 2018, tethers were again no longer backed 1-to-1 by
U.S. dollars in a Tether bank account, because a substantial portion of the backing in the Deltec
account had been transferred to Bitfinex to make up for the funds taken by Crypto Capital, while
the corresponding funds transferred from Bitfinex’s Crypto Capital account to Tether’s Crypto
Capital account were impaired by Crypto Capital’s actions.
45. Tether’s misrepresentation would continue until late February 2019, at which time
Tether updated its website to note that “[e]very tether is always 100% backed by our reserves,
which include traditional currency and cash equivalents and, from time to time, may include
other assets and receivables from loans made by Tether to third parties, which may include
affiliated entities (collectively, ‘reserves’).” Tether did not announce that it had changed its
disclosure, and indeed there were no media reports about the change until several weeks later on
March 14, 2019
I am not up to speed on this, but I’ve long considered Tether to be extremely harmful to the cryptocurrency community as a whole and to Bitcoin in particular.
As a result I’ve not purchased additional cryptocurrency in several years. The first bull run after the inevitable correction when the situation with Tether is resolved is my personal signal to buy.
In modern bitcoin, what is the role of an exchange? Do most people hold their own wallet? If you have an offline wallet, what's the work involved with using that cold key to perform a transaction?
And for an organization like Tesla, do they now have 2 FTE to manage their holdings or do they just have 3000 wallets with different amounts of BTC some of which are online and some of which are offline?
This all seems like an enormous PITA to actually use for 99.9% of human sized transactions; an exchange seems like a reasonable mitigation against that, but now you're 100% at the mercy of something that's as trustworthy as an 1830's bank.
- None is saying this movement caused the drop. I'd be stupid to do so. Contributing factor ...
- This is clear: The number of "whale" wallets vs. smaller wallets has done nothing but increase.-
- Influx to exchanges have been outsized and abnormal large these past few days ...
... so, it would stand to reason that the market is more and more controlled and at the mercy of bigger players. Some speak of a massive "transfer of wealth" ...
https://www.coindesk.com/nyag-tether-bitfinex-loan-documents...
https://twitter.com/deltecleaks
I have not fact checked the leaks.
EDIT: https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-...
NYAG taking action against Bitfinex/Tether!
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