Bitcoin Forum

Hey guys,

so I know the talks about tether and whether or not they are backed and how is almost as old as Bitcoin itself.
However, this is the only risk that I cannot fully grasp or understand. I see that they minted another billion USDT in the last week.

All the other arguments of anti Bitcoiner (energy, volatility, ...) I can counter.

Is Tether also the thing you are most unsure of?

Would like some input, THANKS :)

Regarding the first point you mentioned, apparently, they're planning to publish "real-time" reserve data in the upcoming years[1]. Not sure if that's going to be something that they could easily "fake" or not?

As for the "other things" then my problem is with the centralization. I know they claim to only use it when a service gets hacked, and the hacker converts his funds to USDT. but the fact that they are able to freeze any address any time they want is a bit scary.

[1] https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/10/20/tether-will-publish-reserve-data-in-real-time-in-2024-report/

As simple as can you trust centralization? if yes, then you will believe with anything they said or vice versa.

The transparency, audit, reports, chain swaps, mint new tokens, burn the existing tokens etc anything can be faked as there's no way to verify it and predict the future what the developer will do next.

Tether USDT is like other stable coins which can be frozen in your wallet.

PSA: Most Stablecoins Can Be Frozen, Even in Your Own Wallets (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5204055.0)
USDT banned addresses: https://dune.com/phabc/usdt---banned-addresses
USDC banned addresses: https://dune.com/phabc/usdc-banned-addresses
It seems those pages don't work at the moment, you can visit them to check later.

Nobody can freeze your bitcoin stored in your non custodial wallets because they don't have private keys.

The Tether un-backed theory has circulated for quite same time. From searches, you can date it back to not long after it was created. There has been multiple articles and such detailing the reserves at multiple points and there are ways to somewhat verify it.

However.

Nothing stops Tether, or any other stablecoin (other than DAI IMO) from pulling the rug on reserves and making a huge power and money play. That's quite a pessimistic force though, and the thunder would reign shortly following (I would assume, and hope).

I say other than DAI as DAI is collateralized, backed by other crypto assets and managed by a smart contract that has stood the test of time for quite a while to date (RIP Nikolai Musheigan btw, if you don't know about this story, read about t)

The problem with tether is that it will be difficult to verify if Bitfinex has enough reserve funds to back the stablecoin. The so-called reserve data can be faked or manipulated. Most of these centralised platforms publish fake audits or data to deceive customers. Some numbers shown in some of the insurance funds or proof of reserve are randomly generated to make these platforms look healthy, this was the case with FTX.

Some of these centralised crypto firms even go to the extent of borrowing money to balance and publish a clean account and these funds will be withdrawn and given back to the creditor. It was suspected that crypto.com borrowed $400m from Gate.io to aid it in publishing a clean PoR audit report. Binance and Bitfinex are also guilty of moving funds immediately after publishing so-called audit reserves reports. These centralised platforms cannot be trusted because they engage in so many shady practices.  

Check this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5469988.msg62978993#msg62978993

unless Tether has a video camera that livestreams a bank vault where every bank note has been seen and counted. and it shows the auditors doing an actual count that can be proven. where watching the livestream shows money-in money-out.
unless the above, you cant fully verify reserves

banks can create money(loans) where by someone can take a loan. print out a bank statement to show funds. and then default the loan .. yet still suggest the bank statement is valid proof.. reality, its not

many people used to bounce cheques. they would deposit a cheque to create a balance on an ATM mini-statement and then bounce the cheque

some people would wire transfer money, get a bank statement. then from origin bank do a chargeback refund

some businesses "hire" auditors who fudge numbers in their favour

..
also.
those custodians holding fiat cash BANK reserves can get into legal trouble from outside reasons, where their accounts can get frozen meaning unable to process cash withdrawals. so when you want to cash out your tether they have no cash to give

those custodians holding fiat cash BANK reserves can get greedy and simply decide its time to run off to an exotic island and transfer the cash to his own account and disapear.

Will probably be as legitimate as those websites showing a forever increasing 'real time' number of customers.  Any 'real time data' for me is a question mark.  How will this happen.  Will they publish a very short informative bullet every time there is a change in their reserve next to a 'live reserve total'?  Even doing that, how will this prove any thing.

Every body knows Bank statements are the most widely accepted proof of almost every single banking operation.  But no body wonders how valid the statements themselves are.  They just go with the flow by thinking it is valid because banks must be functioning 100 percent legally.  Wild to think a text written on a piece of paper by one of the most corrupt and criminal type of institutions is accepted as definitive and backed proof.

well it is "proof"(as you say for legality) but its proof of an instance/state of account, for exactly a 1 second of the print time of that statement.. whatever happens on the 2nd second after printing a statement cant be seen by the statement so the bank account can then be different to the statement just seconds after the statement is printed

however if there were special arrangements of a bank account that can only be deposited/withdrawn once a month.(cold wallet style) so an audit 2second before deposits/withdrawals and 2second after deposits/withdrawals can then be trusted a bit more where they know XX% of funds are locked for the rest of the month

i say this tongue in cheek with a smile of hilarity.. because even employee pension pots pretend to have 100% of employees pension locked till their 65yo.. but later find out the business has been syphoning funds it was not suppose to take out early

Even if we were to assume that everything has always being in order when it comes to the money Tether has as its reserves, there is no way to know if this will keep being true, so the risk of Tether collapsing because of a lack of reserves will always be there, and this is true for all stable coins and centralized projects, there are simply too many examples of this through history, which is what motivated Satoshi on the first place to create bitcoin as an alternative.

Such task is nothing important for them and they always give excuse about "privacy".

Even such thing exist, I can counter your argument by saying if the bank notes are fake, so it's useless even the auditors count it.

Yeah there have been many stablecoins lost it's peg, this is the full list https://chainsec.io/failed-stablecoins/

There are many debates on this topic. I personally think tether is a ticking bomb but it is kind of hard to guess when the bomb will go off. They are still inflating the tether bubble but they need to gain something from it if they want to burst it. Unless bursting it will become for profitable for them, they will keep pumping it. I wouldn’t hold any tethers just in case. You’ll never know when will these crooks get mad. Hold only hard currencies like btc, ltc and xmr instead of holding tether. Tether may go down tomorrow or 20 years later. We can’t predict the exact date but that doesn’t mean we can’t protect ourselves. It is indeed crazy to see that they can print a billion usd  out of thin air and nobody calls them out. Let’s see how long that will last.

You cannot believe on anything in this world anymore. If a exchange like FTX can run away with people's fund, anything can go wrong. Tether is the most used crypto asset in terms of 1:1 backed by USD however it's the number because you don't have any reliable alternatives. So when you have just one option to use, that's what you have to use. I prefer Fiat over USDT to be honest. Or even convert all your funds on blockchain to Bitcoin, the best option.

Unsure of holding it because it's likely that they can point out to any address and freeze it as their own desire. I think with this feature, it's also available with other stable coins that we have in the market. What I think of contributing to the pump that we've got now is also that you've mentioned that there has been another printing sequence that's been made by Tether, so it was likely injected to the market again. And that is typically happening whenever another series of printing happens.

All allegations about Tether enough funds to cover the transactions are true and you can verify them, but people’s trust in this currency is what makes it shocking, and if anything happens that shakes this trust, the price of this currency will be one cent.
There is a decentralized currency, which is DAI, and it is not possible to freeze your money inside the wallet, but this currency still depends on USDC, but in general it is much better than USDT, so use it or withdraw your money to cash if you want to keep it for a long time.

Tether, as far as I am aware, has become more transparent about its reserves. And, as a result of this transparency, I was able to lessen the risk of fraud and mismanagement in my understanding based on my research.

Tether has also maintained its peg to the US currency. As a result, Tether has enough reserves to support the peg, indicating that there is sufficient demand for USDT.

This is a very important topic which everyone should be worried because we have assumed Tether will sustain forever as claims as USD of crypto but till date there has been no proof to prove that they are back by reserve as it's an assumption that it has been in the market and one of more adopted stable coin it will have reserve but sooner or later this is gonna upset everyone like other projects. I remember few years ago there were talks of banning crypto in India and the value of Tether against the Indian rupees dropped by more than 50% which shouldn't the case with a stable coin if it's backed by reserves and they can easily manipulate to show the reserves it's not rocket science, it's not only tether but all the other crypto stable coins as it's just a matter of time one reputed stable coin goes down they it will create such a panic thay people will start dumping all the stable coin altogether. Never hodl massive amount in Tether or any other stablecoin.

It's still unbelievable that Tether is as transparent as you describe it.
There is nothing that strengthens us to be able to trust Tether in matters related to everything Tether.
Research how you do with Tether because falsification can be done on the transparency report in question. Maybe I was wrong about my trust in Tether.

First, the Tether controversy is about transparency, not whether its backed. They mint another billion, leaving us asking, "Whats backing this?" In a transparent industry, its a valid concern.

On to Tether's Bitcoin ties. Its dangerous; Tether's stability affects Bitcoin's market due to its volume and trading use. This is about Tether's ripple effect on the crypto industry, not just trust. Tether destabilization could send market confidence tumbling, and thats not just FUD.

However, is Tether worry a mask for greater crypto issues? Think about it. The Tether drama may have blinded us to other system vulnerabilities. Worrying about a leaky faucet while a flood is brewing is like that. Digging and asking strengthens our understanding and environment.

I'm strongly reminded of the "real-time" data that FTX published of their "insurance fund":
https://cointelegraph.com/news/ftx-insurance-fund-sam-bankman-fried-fraud-trial-gary-wang-testimony

In the end we'll probably never find out whether Tether is fully covered until after the fact.

There are many powerful entities which can hide the truth and we only know part of the truth or just what those entities want to leak to the public including us. Sometimes they don't intentionally leak information but there are loop holes in their systems which fail to cover their traces. Generally, we never know the whole truth from governments or big companies like Tether.

No one imagined Enron can collapse even with an audits from a big audit company. No one imagined FTX can collapse within a week. There are some people who are very experienced actually smelt about risk from those companies before they collapsed and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Unfortunately, most of the crowd who invested money to those companies did not know anything about risk.

Circumstances can change, and even institutions supervised by the government can turn scary. You shouldn't trust that the usd reserves in the safe will stay in place. They can be pulled at any time, while the tokens will still be recorded and function on the network even with no fiat-pegged.
This risk can't be eliminated by default, if someone thinks so then that is what you should accept.

It's not for DAI, because it one of the most popular decentralized stablecoin (https://makerdao.com/en/).

I think it's kind of different discussion, I must say.

Enron is energy company in US and FTX is a centralized exchange, while Tether is a stablecoin. They're work different, both Enron and FTX were legit businesses as they have product to offer, while Tether could be a scam from the first time it was exist, they're strong because the market still trust in Tether.

Tether stores its reserves in Treasuries. According to the latest report, this is more than $56 billion. This can be called an informal agreement and most of the money will work for the American economy.
https://tether.to/en/tether-q3-attestation-reveals-highest-percentage-of-cash-and-cash-equivalent-reserves-over-330m-reduction-in-secured-loans-and-maintains-726b-exposure-in-us-t-bills/
I cannot blame the company for this, because these are the rules in the market.
If there are problems with the US economy, then most of the assets will lose value and the USDT will lose its peg to the dollar.