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Comment by craigc | Hacker News Reader

What makes the claim extraordinary? If I wanted to make an easily tradable form of USD on the blockchain, I would take a similar approach. Take deposits in US Dollars and issue an equal number of “dollar backed coins” on the blockchain that can then be sent around from exchange to exchange. Nothing about that seems extraordinary to me.

It is very likely the federal reserve is going to do something very similar in the coming years. They will also print more of their coin at will, but no one is going to make a stink about that cause they have already been doing it for a hundred years.

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The extraordinary claim that people pumped billions of real US dollars into an upstart exchange with no proper accounting.

Ahhhh. Okay that makes more sense. Although at the time they did have accounting and audits. The last audit was September 2017, I believe.

No, Tether never completed an audit. Their auditor fired them. Their claimed "frequent professional audits" on the home page encompasses precisely zero completed audits.

https://www.coindesk.com/tether-confirms-relationship-audito...

> Given the excruciatingly detailed procedures Friedman was undertaking for the relatively simple balance sheet of Tether, it became clear that an audit would be unattainable in a reasonable time frame. As Tether is the first company in the space to undergo this process and pursue this level of transparency, there is no precedent set to guide the process nor any benchmark against which to measure its success.

Wrong. They were fired after their audit in September 2017 which is available here:

https://tether.to/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Final-Tether-Co...

That's not an audit. It's a memo.

It explicitly states on the first page that it cannot be relied upon.

When Tether posted it (https://tether.to/announcement-transparency-update/) they stated " These consulting services do not constitute an audit or attestation engagement, which would include a significantly expanded scope of procedures and take substantially more time to complete."

And into a bank that has no US dealings or holdings, because Wells Fargo dropped them, and there are challenges with them using a US banks.

A bank that, through 2017, raised no questions when they were supposedly depositing multiple hundred million dollars, _multiple_ times a week.

I agree that there are dubious actions surrounding Tether, but I still want to see proof.

I think the bank argument is a little weak since banks are the exact group that crypto currencies are disrupting and stand to lose the most if crypto currencies succeed. If I were a bank I wouldn’t want to be involved with any company that makes it easier for people to trade US dollars for crypto currencies either.

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