Monitoring the Crypto Bubble

Where do you think we are in the crypto bubble?


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@Aelfred tether is not crypto IMO, it is just a centralized currency created on centralized servers somewhere. Lots of crypto people HATE Tether because it isn't real crypto and relies on a 3rd party to exist. Something like bitcoin is decentralized, peer to peer backed by cryptographic elements in how it works.

Regardless of that you have to understand that people routinely try to attack and sabotage successful crypto-related projects because "the wrong people" own them. If the "right people" owned Tether then there would be much less fuss and that is just how big finance operates and will continue to do so as long as we let them.

Do some research into where all your Tether talking points came from, find out who owns those places. Don't get back to us on it just keep it in your head. :)
 
Consider the following:

1. If what Bloomberg says is false, why is Tether not denying it
2. If what Bloomberg says is not completely true, why isn't Tether clearing it up by releasing their asset breakdowns
3. If Tether is somehow not allowed to deny holding x due to ongoing court cases, why are they doing it anyway for things like Evergrande
4. If Tether is somehow not allowed to release their detailed asset breakdowns and audits, why do they keep promising they will be be released "soon"
5. If absolutely any of these extremely damning allegations are even slightly wrong in any way, why is Tether saying "Everyone already knew all this, it's old news."

In regards to Moore Cayman, as far as I am aware Moore is a franchising firm who takes payments for people to license its name. Moore Cayman is not a subsidiary of Moore, it is a licensee. These are very different things to the extent of being basically unrelated. It is not like KPMG or pwc or other global accounting firms. And even if Moore Cayman is 100% legit, which they might well be, why are they unable to provide an audit? They're accounting professionals and yet have provided nothing more than extremely vague asset breakdowns with no mention of counterparties. Every single other entity which resembles Tether provides an exact asset breakdown with counterparties. It is the only real important information you need to know in a money market fund. Everything else is noise. You would think this would be crucial information that a reputable accounting firm would provide.

However, let's try to stay on-topic as jumping from point to point isn't discussing anything - let's assume Moore is fully legit, because nothing Moore claims is contrary to what Bloomberg is claiming, and get back to the previous points.

moore is a top 20 accounting firm, you have asserted that tether is not fully backed by usd and their assurance report states that they are. they have provided an independent report that shows all issued tethers are able to be redeemed 1:1.

the "full audit" is just more fud, no other stablecoin issuer has done this. both visa and coinbase, a us listed company has integrated tether, would they be allowed to do this if there were any concerns?
 
Fair enough re: speculating. I can tell you now that nothing legally prevents them though, which is why they deny holding Evergrande.

I was thinking more along the lines that the less they say in public at the moment the better it is. They don't want to hand the opposition more fuel for the fire.

Really, have a read of that statement they released.

I just did, doesn't strike me as being in any way odd, just your standard news release denying the author's allegations. Maybe your definitions of "dismiss" and "deny" are different to mine.

Back to a point you raised earlier regarding the apparent number of members here who support Tether. Don't confuse the fact that many crypto holders really just don't care about the Tether FUD and whether it's backed by USD or not , with support for Tether and its founders, furthermore most of us are of the opinion that leveraging short term debt is just stupid, whether it's with loans from Tether or not. We're more interested in rebutting the ongoing allegations from those outside of the cryptosphere that the whole crypto market boom is a result of manipulation by Tether and Bitfinex.
 
moore is a top 20 accounting firm, you have asserted that tether is not fully backed by usd and their assurance report states that they are. they have provided an independent report that shows all issued tethers are able to be redeemed 1:1.
I already addressed why Moore Cayman is not related at all to Moore itself.

Re: independent report. At no point in their attestation, or anywhere else, does Tether claim that USDT is fully backed by USD. I don't know why you think this is the case. In their previous attestation, the one which separated cash from everything else, Tether said they are backed just 2.7% by USD. Let's assume they're telling the truth, for argument's sake.

Now let's get down to the other 97%. Tether does not provide the names of the counterparties or a breakdown of the assets. Tether does not mark those assets to market. Tether can literally say "I have a horse. I think the horse is worth $69 billion dollars. I am going to use this horse for double entry accounting purposes. I put the horse on my balance sheet. Now I have $69 billion dollars of assets. I can issue $69 billion of USDT, which is backed 1 to 1 by my reserves. I have $69 billion dollars of USDT, which are liabilities in my double entry accounting. But I have $69 billion dollars of assets, which is my horse. My books are balanced and USDT is fully backed."

Now you begin to realise why everyone reveals their counterparties. The above story could be used to describe every single accounting fraud from 1600 A.D to now. It's the same story. Enron, mortgage backed securities "worth" 100 cents on the dollar which were actually worthless, etc. It's just an accounting gimmick. If you value your own assets yourself, and you don't reveal what those assets are, you can claim whatever you want and nobody can prove you wrong because nobody except you knows. It's not complicated, it's just fraud.

I just did, doesn't strike me as being in any way odd, just your standard news release denying the author's allegations. Maybe your definitions of "dismiss" and "deny" are different to mine.

I can tell you that their statement is 100% A-grade bullshit which says nothing. Absolutely nothing. They don't deny anything. They don't say anything. They just ramble and allude that it's FUD without actually disagreeing with ANYTHING in the article. Let's go through it step-by-step because this statement is really exemplary in how to run a fraud.

The Bloomberg BusinessWeek piece published today is a one-act play the industry has seen many times before, taking snippets of old news from various places and dubious sources, and making it fit a pre-packaged and pre-determined narrative.
Again, note that they don't say that anything in it is false. They seem to even allude that it's true. They just say "old news" - aka, everyone already knows this.

Crypto—and Tether in particular—are fostering a revolution in financial inclusion, transforming a model that doesn’t work in a modern world. This article does nothing more than attempt to perpetuate a false and aging story arc about Tether based on innuendo and misinformation, shared by disgruntled individuals with no involvement with or direct knowledge of the business’s operations. It’s another tired attempt to undermine a market leader whose track record of innovation, liquidity, and success speaks for itself.
This is meaningless jargon that means nothing. Translation: Tether is great and we're doing really good things. The story "arc" that some people tell about us is false, however we won't go as far as to say anything in that article is false.

The reporter refuses to let the facts get in the way of the story he wants to tell, instead relying on John Betts, the former head of Noble Bank, whom Tether fired as its banker. In an ongoing lawsuit, Betts has also been accused of engaging in egregious and wasteful self-dealing and seeking to enrich himself at Noble’s expense. It shows a complete lack of diligent research and is filled with outlandish anecdotes that are not geared toward ethical reporting but character assassination. This story works hard to discredit Giancarlo Devasini and Tether’s executives with sources that are far from credible. Following the last Bloomberg story, Tether’s CFO has in fact received many messages from those inspired by his story, coming from a medical background to revolutionize the financial industry.
Translation: don't listen to our previous banker. We won't say anything he said is false, though. Also, the reporter was really mean to Giancarlo Devasini who is a really awesome guy and totally has heaps of friends out there who wrote him really nice messages so just ignore the fact he has said a bunch of really dodgy things and done some really dodgy stuff in the past because some people who we won't name said nice things about him.

Tether, its management, and its community are working for a more financially inclusive world. While this may threaten the establishment of traditional financial systems, we will continue to work for the underrepresented.
Meaningless jargon that says nothing.

Here are the facts: All Tether tokens are fully backed, as we have consistently demonstrated. The company has taken a leadership position in transparency, providing quarterly assurance attestations (as recently as the June 30, 2021 target date) confirming that all Tether tokens are fully backed. And these attestations and statements also confirm the vast majority of the commercial paper held by Tether is in A-2 and above rated issuers.
This is the best paragraph of all. Translation: All Tether tokens are backed. We won't tell you what they're backed with. For all you know, it might as well be a horse we think is worth $69 billion dollars. Most of our commercial paper is with A-2 and above issuers but despite them being super stable and trustworthy, we won't tell you who they are, tee hee. Also, we know that China rates commercial paper differently and A-2 Chinese paper is essentially junk, e.g. Evergrande being rated A-2 even as it defaulted. But we won't tell you how many of our bonds are Chinese, tee hee.

There will always be a market for Tether as it presents an opportunity for traders to interact with the larger crypto ecosystem. It is a resource for the unbanked, a tool for an evolving payment system, and a leader in driving the mainstream adoption of a new financial revolution. Tether is the most liquid stablecoin on the market, it was the first stablecoin, and it has withstood years of volatility. Tether makes the crypto economy more efficient.
Meaningless jargon that says nothing.


What they didn't say:
  • Bloomberg was wrong about anything
  • We don't hold Chinese commercial paper
  • We don't hold Bitcoin on our balance sheet against which we issue USDT (the CEO of Celsius came out today and confirmed this is the true, even)
  • Here's a list of our counterparties
  • Here's that audit we've been promising for years and (again) promised we would release months ago
If what they say is inane babble that confirms or denies nothing, pay attention to what they're not saying.
 
@Aelfred, I appreciate the efforts you’ve gone to in posting your own well detailed thoughts on the issue, it adds value to this forum, regardless of whether we are in agreement or not.

I’m curious why it’s such a big deal to you because as I’ve posted above, many of us in the cryptosphere don’t really care? Is it just a fraud thing or are other issues involved?
 
I bought back in 5 or 6 days ago at btc 50k but no ltc this time. I went with Dash and eth as well as btc this purchase.
Making money sucks!
 
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I'll do you one better - this is just the flows into crypto from *today* - October 12. Every single day looks like this. See the source for yourself.
https://coinlib.io/coin/BTC/Bitcoin
tether-today.png


This is what nobody wants you to see. This is why every coin almost always moves together in unison. This is why nobody talks about Tether, and the enlightened prophets of Twitter try to shut down any discussion of it, and tell the faithful to dismiss it as "Tether FUD" and to stop asking questions. The whole thing is a fraud. And once you realise it's a fraud, you realise why the people facilitating it act like they do. You realise why they coordinate their responses. You realise why they never provide an audit, or tell you where the money is coming from, or tell you where it is going. You realise why they speak of the vague future that is never too far away but never here, where everyone is rich, where we are all billionaires in the Citadel, and why they constantly push that you "believe". It also means you never ask why these crypto influencers live in mansions, drive lambos, and are wealthy beyond your wildest dreams. Because then you might ask yourself where they got the money.

The most incredible thing is this isn't even the first time someone has done this to BTC. It's exactly Mt Gox, just using USDT instead of internal Mt Gox credits. But most people in crypto are too young to have been adults in 2013, have only bought in the past few years, and don't even know what Mt Gox is, so Tether can pull the exact same scam and nobody asks questions. Even better, the disciples see the stock to flow model and believe that BTC was "supposed" to go that high, despite it only reaching those early heights by fraud and market manipulation which later unravelled when people realised the money wasn't there, it was just paper money.
 
I'm devastated to learn there's a 1 hour limit to editing a post! That's what I get for shitposting while at work.

So in answer to my earlier question to you, it's a fraud thing used to manipulate the price of BTC and the overall market.
You ask for proof that Tether is 90% of the market - I give you the live on-chain data showing it is.
You imply that it is impossible to manipulate crypto by using a token which can only be used to buy crypto - I mention the fact that this exact scenario happened in 2013 and sent BTC from $30 to $1000, so of course it's possible because this isn't the first time it's happened.
And you say: "haha BTC-ETH goes up and down i over 4 year periods so I'm going to ignore everything else you said"

I can save us both some time. What more evidence would it take to convince you that the market might be less than 100% organic?

I can show you that Bitcoin is effectively priced in Tether.
I can show you that in the past, the 4/5 people behind Tether have printed billions of dollars of provably unbacked Tether.
I can show you that the circulating supply of Tether is up ~2,300% in the past 18 months.
I can show you that the price of Bitcoin can be manipulated by printing unbacked dollars to buy up the circulating supply, because this is exactly what happened in 2013.

My suspicion is that there is absolutely nothing I can say which will change anybody's mind, beyond Tether going to 0 and having a demonstrably enormous effect on the prices of crypto. That's fine. Until then, all we can do is wait and try be civil about it. I'm not here for the eventual I told you so" - I actually love discussing fraud, and as you've probably noticed I type absolute essays because to me it's just so endlessly fascinating, particularly form the eye of the storm when uncertainty is everywhere. After enough back and forth my windbag index might eventually rival yours!

As long as it's all in good fun and we keep the personal attacks to a minimum, I'm happy to keep chatting away. I took profits on crypto and I even still hold some, so I wouldn't mind if it goes to the moon, but I'm also not going to delude myself. If you want to read a funny and far more entertaining read than my essays, try out Doomberg's take on this. https://doomberg.substack.com/p/a-crypto-field-of-dreams
 
You ask for proof that Tether is 90% of the market - I give you the live on-chain data showing it is.

Thanks, got that already from @tdtwedt the other day.

You imply that it is impossible to manipulate crypto by using a token which can only be used to buy crypto - I mention the fact that this exact scenario happened in 2013 and sent BTC from $30 to $1000, so of course it's possible because this isn't the first time it's happened.

No I didn't imply that. I have argued in the past that the alleged link between an increase in the issuance of Tether and a rising price in BTC being proof of market manipulation is unfounded. But that was way before you joined this forum.

And you say: "haha BTC-ETH goes up and down i over 4 year periods so I'm going to ignore everything else you said"

I think you may be referring to the chart I posted. o_O

You stated:

This is why every coin almost always moves together in unison.

But they don't always move in unison. Since 2018 BTC dominance has more than doubled from a low of 35 up to about 70 to now back down to about 46.

My suspicion is that there is absolutely nothing I can say which will change anybody's mind, beyond Tether going to 0 and having a demonstrably enormous effect on the prices of crypto.

As I've said, it doesn't bother me or other players in the market. If Tether goes to "0" this won't change the fundamentals one bit.
 
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Tether implosion would be a welcome rinse out of current euphoria. But then people have called the American financial system a scam for over 100 years and the result of not participating is the Amish
 
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