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Alan Smithee posted:im still trying to figure out the other way "commercial paper" took me a while too
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Sep 15, 2021 14:43
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Alan Smithee posted:im still trying to figure out the other way commercial paper efb
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Sep 15, 2021 14:44
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Tether has now specifically denied owning paper from Evergrande. They didn't deny owning any other Chinese commercial paper. (also Evergrande is already loving everything.)
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Sep 15, 2021 14:58
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divabot posted:these both rely on Bitfinex'ed being a careful guy with a track record of being right about this poo poo, so YMMV, but his track record is good enough that his claims are worth a lot more than nothing this point is fair, and I would not be shocked if Bitfinex'ed turned out to be right once again. I'm just reluctant to jump on that bandwagon yet because the picture is incomplete - the "how" and "why" of the "Tether making loans to crypto exchanges" theory is fairly straightforward I think, but I haven't seen a clear explanation of the "how" or "why" for the Tether-Evergrande theory. Why would Evergrande want a big loan of USDTs, what are they doing with a bunch of USDTs, how are they converting them to cash or other good assets? Or did Tether pay actual cash for Evergrande debt, in which case: how did Tether actually manage to get enough liquid assets in the first place such that they could throw millions or billions around in the commercial paper market, and why on earth did they decide to plow that cash into Evergrande paper instead of pocketing it for themselves? I think it's also important to note that the two theories (loans to exchanges vs. loans to Evergrande) are not mutually exclusive! it seems plausible that Tether started out with USDT loans to exchanges, and then had to seek out other partners-in-crime as time went on. The only way that scams like this keep going is by growing.
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Sep 15, 2021 15:43
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Tether could put an end to this speculation pretty easily with a bit of transparency about their actual holdings, rather than randomly shooting down people's ideas with carefully worded statements.
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Sep 15, 2021 16:21
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pointsofdata posted:Tether could put an end to this speculation pretty easily with a bit of transparency about their actual holdings, rather than randomly shooting down people's ideas with carefully worded statements. they could, but "tethers aren't backed by anything" wouldn't be the sort of statement that builds confidence in their system
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Sep 15, 2021 17:11
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pointsofdata posted:Tether could put an end to this speculation pretty easily with a bit of transparency about their actual holdings, rather than randomly shooting down people's ideas with carefully worded statements. of course they could, and that's one of the more surreal aspects of this whole Tether thing: in the real financial markets, that kind of transparency is the default expectation, and absolutely no investor or corporate partner with half a brain would ever give billions of dollars to a financial institution that acted like this. In the real big-boy world of finance, any money-market fund or investment bank (which is what Tether is equivalent to, if you believe their descriptions of their own business) that acted like Tether would get laughed out of the room by investors and stomped on by regulatory agencies, and for drat good reason. you know how folks say that the cryptocurrency world is speedrunning the history of finance and learning all those lessons over again? I don't know exactly when it's gonna happen, but some day in the not-too-distant future, they're all going to learn exactly why it is a bad loving idea to do business with wildcat banks that aren't subject to capital requirements or regulatory inspections or financial statement audits.
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Sep 15, 2021 17:12
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it seems weird to me that there's a lot of taking tether at their word about being backed by anything, even partially. they're adding hundreds of millions at a time in neat round number chunks, so the idea that this is representing real assets they hold, even if it's inflated a bit, is a bit odd
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Sep 15, 2021 17:21
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literally the scam from 19th century american wildcat banks, where they issued bank notes and their "reserves" were barrels of nails with a thin layer of gold/silver on the top. the only thing new is the scale.
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Sep 15, 2021 17:24
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kw0134 posted:literally the scam from 19th century american wildcat banks, where they issued bank notes and their "reserves" were barrels of nails with a thin layer of gold/silver on the top. but they're ten penny nails so really what you have there is a barrel of dimes
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Sep 15, 2021 17:30
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Blotto_Otter posted:you know how folks say that the cryptocurrency world is speedrunning the history of finance and learning all those lessons over again? this implies they actually learn anything 
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Sep 15, 2021 17:39
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kw0134 posted:literally the scam from 19th century american wildcat banks, where they issued bank notes and their "reserves" were barrels of nails with a thin layer of gold/silver on the top. weird how the currency of the future depends so much on two centuries' worth of amnesia and banking like its 1829
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Sep 15, 2021 17:42
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kw0134 posted:literally the scam from 19th century american wildcat banks, where they issued bank notes and their "reserves" were barrels of nails with a thin layer of gold/silver on the top. at least back then you'd be left with a barrel of nails
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Sep 15, 2021 17:42
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Blotto_Otter posted:weird how the currency of the future depends so much on two centuries' worth of amnesia and banking like its 1829 they literally think that bitcoin is the first way of transferring money over the internet
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Sep 15, 2021 17:43
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and the barrel of nails did not consume the energy of a medium-sized country simply to exist
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Sep 15, 2021 17:44
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Blotto_Otter posted:weird how the currency of the future depends so much on two centuries' worth of amnesia and banking like its 1829
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Sep 15, 2021 17:46
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Boxturret posted:it seems weird to me that there's a lot of taking tether at their word about being backed by anything, even partially. they're adding hundreds of millions at a time in neat round number chunks, so the idea that this is representing real assets they hold, even if it's inflated a bit, is a bit odd same, the only reason people think tether is backed by cp is that known liars tether inc said so
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Sep 15, 2021 17:47
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fins posted:at least back then you'd be left with a barrel of nails
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Sep 15, 2021 17:55
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Chris Knight posted:yes but those have no intrinsic value, like water jokes on you, they have an nft for the nails
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Sep 15, 2021 21:34
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nail-filled tun
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Sep 15, 2021 21:40
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Grace Baiting posted:nail-filled tun
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Sep 15, 2021 22:33
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backed by an nft of a pile of gold valued at the equivalent real amount
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Sep 15, 2021 22:50
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Blotto_Otter posted:this point is fair, and I would not be shocked if Bitfinex'ed turned out to be right once again. I'm just reluctant to jump on that bandwagon yet because the picture is incomplete - the "how" and "why" of the "Tether making loans to crypto exchanges" theory is fairly straightforward I think, but I haven't seen a clear explanation of the "how" or "why" for the Tether-Evergrande theory. Why would Evergrande want a big loan of USDTs, what are they doing with a bunch of USDTs, how are they converting them to cash or other good assets? Or did Tether pay actual cash for Evergrande debt, in which case: how did Tether actually manage to get enough liquid assets in the first place such that they could throw millions or billions around in the commercial paper market, and why on earth did they decide to plow that cash into Evergrande paper instead of pocketing it for themselves? I agree the whole Evergrande Chinese CP thing is certainly not the simplest explanation. But, one plausible use case Tether actually has is evading capital controls in China (or evading other Chinese laws like bans on gambling). So, maybe Chinese people/exchanges/OTC desks really did give Tether actual money in exchange for Tethers. Tether also might have issues getting money out of the country, so they figure they might as well earn a return on it within China - maybe even enough to cover losses or sales below par. The only thing that doesnt make sense is if it was a move to evade capital controls, presumably their customers would want actual money back at some point *outside* of China. There's not much evidence any Tether redemptions have happened at scale, though, which means either these hypothetical customers are holding Tether, or attempting to cash it out via some other cryptocurrency and leaving someone else holding the bag.
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Sep 16, 2021 01:09
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vote to refer to commercial paper as TP when in the bitcoin thread
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Sep 16, 2021 01:13
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Boxturret posted:vote to refer to commercial paper as TP when in the bitcoin thread What about cpee?
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Sep 16, 2021 01:18
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from the sound of it, Evergrande paper is worth slightly less than TP
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Sep 16, 2021 01:21
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drk posted:I agree the whole Evergrande Chinese CP thing is certainly not the simplest explanation. But, one plausible use case Tether actually has is evading capital controls in China (or evading other Chinese laws like bans on gambling). So, maybe Chinese people/exchanges/OTC desks really did give Tether actual money in exchange for Tethers. Tether also might have issues getting money out of the country, so they figure they might as well earn a return on it within China - maybe even enough to cover losses or sales below par. unless there's some novel new scam that we can't see the shape of from here my assumption is that they were doing low margin otc laundering as their main business model and then kinda blundered into the whole tether scam when they had to scramble to cover holes in their books. like the official story or whatever is that they got hacked right after literally 99% of reported exchange volume disappeared due to china cracking down and the attending price crash, that lead to them giving everyone a 30% haircut and then issuing tokens to cover the difference when people complained. so it sure looks like they ended up short and had to do something to cover the red ink, and tether is just what they pulled out of their rear end to do it. the original scam had the stink of utter desperation on it, but it turned out to be so loving simple to get away with...at least so far...that it ended up being part of their (and the rest of cryptocurrency's) core business model
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Sep 16, 2021 01:34
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Its just a lot cleaner for it to be what it looks like today - Tether mints, and it mostly goes to a small number of large players. FTX and our friend Sam Bank-man for example is running a great little scheme - they allow customers to trade with high leverage on FTX, then run Alameda "Research"* at the same time. They get Tether prints $100M to $1B at a time lately, in exchange presumably for some sort of debt instrument. With that kind of firepower, they can trade effectively against their own customers and turn a profit, in theory maybe even make enough profit to pay Tether back to some degree (in Tether, no legit bank is going to regularly move huge USD sums with no documentation on where it came from). *note the only research going on is how to pull classic market manipulations for big gains
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Sep 16, 2021 02:54
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quote:Any Other Female Bitcoin Miners Out There? (self.Bitcoin)
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Sep 16, 2021 10:05
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Crust First posted:hard-working women in the world of Bitcoin mining. a) lol b) 
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Sep 16, 2021 10:33
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https://twitter.com/LisaForteUK/status/1438190716061208579?s=19
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Sep 16, 2021 12:09
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Boxturret posted:vote to refer to commercial paper as TP when in the bitcoin thread
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Sep 16, 2021 12:28
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Chris Knight posted:I need TP for my coinhole
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Sep 16, 2021 14:04
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I am coinholio! i need TP for my bithole!
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Sep 16, 2021 14:11
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 lmao
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Sep 16, 2021 14:38
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drk posted:I agree the whole Evergrande Chinese CP thing is certainly not the simplest explanation. But, one plausible use case Tether actually has is evading capital controls in China (or evading other Chinese laws like bans on gambling). So, maybe Chinese people/exchanges/OTC desks really did give Tether actual money in exchange for Tethers. Tether also might have issues getting money out of the country, so they figure they might as well earn a return on it within China - maybe even enough to cover losses or sales below par. thanks, this makes a little more sense to me now. but now there's a few more things I'm curious about, if they're selling USDTs for RMB or other non-dollar currencies. Tether's USD banking problems have been infamous and a key reason to distrust their business... so how does the Chinese banking environment compare? Would they actually be able to take significant amounts of RMB without getting the attention of Chinese regulators and running into the same banking problems they had in the US? (Or is this where a relationship with someone like Evergrande would come in, where an existing business acts as a front for Tether?) like SubG said, it seems very possible they're facilitating capital flight, but at the scales involved I'd be surprised if this is Tether's core business now rather than just printing up and lending USDTs to Bitfinex and FTX and the like.
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Sep 16, 2021 15:25
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FAUXTON posted:but they're ten penny nails so really what you have there is a barrel of dimes How much green energy does a barrel full of dimes store at full charge?
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Sep 16, 2021 17:04
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DerekSmartymans posted:How much green energy does a barrel full of dimes store at full charge? when appropriately wrapped, quite a bit
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Sep 16, 2021 17:11
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first day back in the office and I got in an argument about cryptocurrency with a colleague, in this case about the "helium network", my argument was that if you're standing up a sensor network then someone has to be paying you real money, so money is going in somewhere, and if if each node is not processing 'blocks' to issue tokens or whatever then you have a central authority doing it, so this is not 'an exciting use case made possible by cryptocurrency', it's a mesh network with a central authority that you pay to use. then we ran out of booze and stopped but I also said that his description of it ( "people are issued tokens for providing the network service to others which is intrinsic value") was a pyramid scheme unless at some point somebody was paying real money to use whatever it did also I had to laugh at the idea that it was somehow cheaper/better to deploy a chain of sensors on the blockchain to build a network wide enough to "put a sensor in a remote location" vs just sticking in a GSM enabled one where you actually want it
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Sep 16, 2021 21:08
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oh my god this is just perfect blockchainnonsense.txt https://www.pcmag.com/news/helium-introduces-tag-tracker-for-its-blockchain-based-network quote:Helium pays hotspot owners back by letting them collect HNT, a proprietary token with a current value of around 31 cents per token. According to Reddit's Helium subreddit, all hotspots share around 80,000 tokens daily, which means that as the number of hotspots goes up, the earnings per hotspot go down; one poster quotes a global average of 27.5 HNT ($8.50) per day right now. That means a hotspot could make back its $349 in 41 days. (Helium's official website estimates about 108,000 tokens are distributed daily.) and the comments:  check mate fiatalures
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Sep 16, 2021 21:15
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