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Comment by simmerup | Hacker News Reader

If it shows any risk to the price of Bitcoin, Tether will just print tokens out of thin air to buy them. As is tradition

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Who'll be buyer for 2B worth of tether?

No one. But they don’t need a buyer to create Tether coins.

But if they want to buy Bitcoin with them there needs to be someone on the other side of the transaction.

The users of USDT are fine with this scheme (at least, they've been so far)

Which is fine, as long as the Tethers aren’t turned into real money their value isn’t realised. They stay in the system and the charade goes on

It could be pretty much the Germany police, directly or indirectly, since Tether proposes non volatile "currency" easily convertible with Bitcoin.

But the German police wants real money not Tether. There needs to be someone to offer it or BTC/USD will collapse.

The exchanges and crypto trading firms take billions of Tether in the form of bitcoin-collateralized loans [1].

Alex Mashinsky, former CEO of the now-defunct Celsius Network, described how it works [2]:

“If you give them enough collateral, liquid collateral, bitcoin, ethereum and so on ... they will mint tether against it,” he said.

“New USDT is issued for such loans,” he added, and later destroyed when the loan is closed “so it does not permanently increase USDT in circulation”.

If true, this contradicts Tether's claims that it only mints USDT in exchange for USD-backed treasuries.

[1] https://www.dirtybubblemedia.com/p/examining-tethers-secret-...

[2] https://www.ft.com/content/0035016c-29ad-4e6f-9163-2a17df490...

Of all the things to see the Tether people indicted for on HN,

it's increasing the price of Bitcoin?!

Is that a surprise to you?

https://blog.dshr.org/2024/01/good-news-for-tether.html?m=1

Well, yeah. It is a surprise to me.

They're linked up heavy with dirtbag fraudsters, and pedophiles.

Seems worth mentioning.

And yet you didn’t

...I just did.

Please stop only posting hot takes and "gotchas" here. Be more substantive.

These conspiracy theories have been around for years, it's not new.

I have no idea if they are true or not, but certainly the people that believe them do not have evidence.

Tethers already been fined for misleading people by saying their coins are 1-1 backed by USD. That’s evidence

Please provide one reason to believe that USDT is actually 1-for-1 backed by USD. Because they say so?

Tether is the crypto version of a wildcat bank. It's totally unaudited, it's owned and operated by a former plastic surgeon and others with limited experience in finance, and it's been heavily fined by the state of New York for its shenanigans. It's only a matter of time before they implode like 3AC, Celsius, FTX, Signature, etc. etc.

Tether's business is very profitable right now because they don't have to pay interest. They can park all the money people hand to them in exchange for tether in T-bills and earn 5%. Meanwhile the people holding the tether get nothing. Basically, they are a bank that pays no interest on deposits.

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