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Comment by graeme | Hacker News Reader

This is very interesting. Hindenburg is the real deal.

One challenge may be that, like the Mafia, Tether keeps its inner circle and employs family members. They have ~15 employees for a 70 billion dollar operation.

The CTO’s wife is a manager, and the CEO’s daughter works for an unnamed crypto family office, which may be related.

Their counterparties in Chinese commercial paper may not know they are counterparties due to proxies.

Still, the statements are out there. Zeke Faux from Bloomberg got a copy of their records somehow. They’ve had to give them to the New York Attorney General, and their accountants in the Cayman Islands, among others. And other counterparties may have bits and pieces.

Someone may be tempted by this.

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>Hindenburg is the real deal.

Hindenburg is not the real deal. If you think Hindenburg is the real deal you should pay closer attention to their activities. They (he) are one of a number of noisy short sellers who try to drive stock prices with their tweets/reports. SEC should be doing things to these people.

That said, he is probably right about Tether. Tether should make every crypto speculator or holder very nervous.

> Hindenburg is not the real deal. If you think Hindenburg is the real deal you should pay closer attention to their activities. They (he) are one of a number of noisy short sellers who try to drive stock prices with their tweets/reports. SEC should be doing things to these people.

https://hindenburgresearch.com/about-us/

Which of the items listed there do you have an issue with? Hindenburg were the folks who gave us Nikola rolling their truck down a hill.

Technically Nikola gave us the truck rolling down the hill. Hindenburg just let us find out about it.

"Nikola One Electric Semi Truck in Motion." must have been the mother of all marketing lies. Technically 100% true, rotten to the core.

100% truthful, yet 100% dishonest.

Yes, he has a website where he pats himself on the back for all of the good calls he's made. I've seen it. Ask yourself, why does a short seller need public confidence at all? It's because they want to be able to move the stock price when they publish something.

> Yes, he has a website where he pats himself on the back for all of the good calls he's made. I've seen it. Ask yourself, why does a short seller need public confidence at all? It's because they want to be able to move the stock price when they publish something.

I'm sorry, but no shit? You frame it like there's some insight or conspiracy theory in there.

Again: What is your issue with this? The market has rules, some companies skirt them or outright lie. The size of the market is too large to regulate with our current mechanisms and short sellers fill some of these gaps for a profit. It becomes an issue if the short seller is wrong and causes harm to a company undeservingly, but you haven't proven that case here.

> It's because they want to be able to move the stock price when they publish something.

Publicity helps move the market which is how they make money. Why do you think that make [him|them] illegitimate? You've not explained this part. It seems to me that you've got an axe to grind with short sellers in general. Hindenburg seems to clearly be "the real deal", whether or not you approve of what "the real deal" is.

This argument has been done to death. I personally find the conga line of analysts and hedge fund managers who appear on CNBC and talk up their book of shit picks a lot worse than the best short selling shops.

There are so many bad companies that are public today, they really need somebody nipping at their heels.

They had a pretty serious report against Nikola that forced the CEO to step down and started an SEC investigation.

They also forced a CEO stepdown at Lordstown motors, got the SEC to investigate and forced the company to amend their accounting statements.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_Research

And their reports have been pretty accurate this year based on long term market reaction: https://breakoutpoint.com/blog/2021/10/activist-short-sellin...

The thing is, anybody that actually followed that industry in any serious way and had any technical understanding knew that that company was full of shit.

A number of stories were already floating around from former employees.

The company was the most obvious scam I have seen in my life. With minimal intelligence and just 10 min of listening to the CEO made clear that it was a scam company.

Sure they went threw the effort and and gathered that stuff up and did some research, but it was hardly some master-journalism that was required.

That may be, but the report had a striking effect.

This is a thread about Tether, another company that is an obvious scam, that even once admitted in court a few years back that they were only 74% backed.

If Hindenburg makes a report formalizing everything and getting some new research, that might well have a similar effect.

Do you have an example of them targeting a non-fraudulent/fair-valued company and ruining them?

As far as I know they were the ones who broke the NKLA scandal. We need short sellers to keep markets honest and stop fraudsters from taking advantage of the current exuberant markets.

They were right about Nikola and Lordstown Motors.

I’m a Hinden-believer I suppose

Anybody that has been following that space in any details already knew that Nikola and Lordstown were terrible companies.

They did some minimal journalism on them and put it out. And nothing the showed outside of maybe that the truck was going down hill was in the least surprising.

you don't need to be a faithful believer - evidence speaks for itself. If hindenburg presents a short thesis, they would need to provide evidence in their papers.

No one should be blindly believing them, just because they have a good past record.

> No one should be blindly believing them, just because they have a good past record.

True. And that is why they don't act on just 'suspicion', but willing to pay to dollars for information.

> They (he) are one of a number of noisy short sellers who try to drive stock prices with their tweets/reports.

Are sell-side "analysts" who cheerlead their long recommendations not doing the same?

Would you pay $1m for information that could let you profit 10x or even 100x?

Exactly, $1m feels very small for someone who could get more profit if they keep their mouth shut.

Short selling profit depends on timing - i.e. the drop happening before the fees for shorting kill you.

So I do have this information, and want to make $$$$$$$ it's actually in my interest to also collect $1M from Hindenburg, to make this information plabic, *after I've established my positions

Oh? Why should the SEC do anything? If it's wrong to talk about a company in hopes of affecting the stock price, shouldn't Elon Musk be doing hard time?

Hard time is for suckers that can't afford the $40m fine.

>shouldn't Elon Musk be doing hard time?

He should be, but they basically gave him the same treatment they give a lot of people: a slap on the wrist.

And forced him to step down as chair in 2018.

Isn't that what everyone in CNBC is doing?

1. Because that's market manipulation.

2. SEC did something to Musk, maybe you forgot, maybe you don't think it was enough, but they did something.

> "The US Securities Exchange Act defines market manipulation as "transactions which create an artificial price or maintain an artificial price for a tradable security"."

They are 'manipulating the market' in an informal sense, but not in the sense that actually matters. There is nothing wrong with publicly stating that you think some stock is overvalued. Particularly not if you back up your claim with some evidence, which is what Hindenburg does.

Relatedly, how does a 17 day old account, with no submissions, attract 416 karma points? Not commenting on the quality of your writing, but it seems extraordinary. Unfortunately the market history on HN is private.

As speedybird points out, that's not market manipulation in the legal sense. And if it were, the Fortune 500 CEOs and CFOs should go to jail immediately, because they all have whole departments that release information to analysts and the public in ways intended to influence the stock price.

If that's what you're arguing for, I might be able to get behind it. But I'm definitely opposed to "pumping the market is fine but countering hype should be illegal".

This is like saying Z$ should make every fiat speculator or holder very nervous. Crypto is huge. You can be involved without coming anywhere near USDT.

You think the shockwave of the tether collapse will leave any crypto unaffected? What if some trading platforms fold?

Unless they are exposed to USDT, why would they fold? They are trading Crypto against USDT (as a token). If USDT folds, its their customers that are going to hold the bag. But many exchanges have USDC too (and maybe their own USD pair); so users should be aware.

not clear if it is the easiest target to short, given that many people who use tether are fairly skeptical about how/if the tokens are backed by assets but use it anyway (if the recent Bloomberg story is accurate).

It is a terrible target to short as you can only do it through exchanges that deal in Tether. Exchanges that can manipulate your position and liquidate you if they feel like it. Exchanges that benefit from Tether existing.

Tether is pervasive in DeFi. You could borrow Tether through a smart contract, exchange for another stable or asset. Pay the interest until it collapses in the future and, buy back worthless Tether cheap to pay off loan and get collateral back.

The danger is that the smart contract you borrow from becomes insolvent and you lose your collateral. This becomes way more likely if Tether/crypto is crashing. Some of them are more prone to that than others, I'm sure, but all of them require collateral > the amount you borrow, so the risk is large.

Yes that is the basic structure of all crypto loans, I'm just describing a mechanism by which you could short Tether. I get what you mean that if Tether collapses, crypto assets like ETH, BTC would crash too. But you could short Tether against USDC w/ USDC as collateral too. I can definitely envision a scenario where USDC holds relatively stable even if USDT crashes.

Nearly all of the smart contract loans are over collateralized, so collateral > borrow isn't too hard to achieve...but yes, probably only likely in crash if collateral is another stable that holds peg.

Just to be clear, I think shorting Tether is a bad idea lol

Seriously, how would you short Tether at scale? It's not like you can call up your prime brokerage.

There are entire textbooks written about how to construct options from a combination of short and long positions in different assets offset by borrowing. It’s not trivial, but it’s a well established discipline in trading world. For anyone that would offer a $1M bounty, it’s probably a talent already on the staff.

Could short the futures ETF now. Timing lines up nicely.

How did you get this info?

I am inclined to apply, but what would be the the best company? Bitfinex or tether?

I just realized that the Bloomberg reporter who wrote the recent story is named "Zeke Faux." (Faux meaning "fake" in French, in a story about fraud.) Is his name a pseudonym? If not, it's another surreal point in a surreal story.

Nope - that's his real last name. We have some mutual friends and via FB I can see at least a dozen family members with the same surname.

"Well, Mikey Ouse on HackerNews vouched for him"

It's pretty clear that Zeke Faux from Bloomberg existed long before Tether existed as a company.

Right.. I could post screen shots but who actually cares? He's got bylines in Bloomberg about questionable finance companies going back a decade..

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2010-04-13/ubs-order...

Guess it could be the long con.. his first article for Bloomberg was written shortly after Bitcoin was first created...

Or is that just what 'Zeke Faux' wants you to believe??? /s

Zeke = ZK = zero-knowledge?

I guess it's actually his real name, and Zeke short for Ezekiel isn't uncommon. But Zeke can also mean 'cloak'.

Christ this may as well be numerology.

I'll play!

Teth - Er

Teht: The Phoenician letter name ṭēth may mean "spinning wheel" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teth

ER: Abbreviation for Emergency Room

"Teth" + "ER" = Spinning dangerously out of control, putting one or more lives at risk.

How did I do?

Your user name is "nine" and you're studying a Wikipedia page about the Semitic letter which means '9' in gematria. Is any of this a coincidence?

Nein!

As I said, I think it's probably his real name. But it's a cool name for sure; his name would be right at home in a cyberpunk novel.

Just a hop skip away from Q

You've opened up a can of something. Check this out: Zeke = 4 letters. Ezekiel, the long form = 7 letters (note this number, cos it will come up further down). Cloak = 5 letters. 4 + 5 = 9. 9 is the number of spiritual adepts that govern the 7 Universes. 9 * 7 = 63. Add those two digits, and you get 9, again. See where this is headed?

Well, if that's a legit name, it's sure doing a good job looking fake!

My cousin married a guy named "Chris Smith" and I was like, "yeah, that doesn't sound made-up or anything".

lol with a name like that its hard to not think its from a Charles Stross novel... ZK Fake .

good lord, the world is a strange place. or, we make it a strange place...

If you're unacquainted, look up (other?) examples of 'nominal determinism' - you're in for a treat!

*nominative determinism

Hm, that does seem to be more standard. Both nominal and onomastic redirect to the page titled nominative determinism on Wikipedia though. Nominal makes a lot more sense to me than nominative.

It also means wrong

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