If you trade it for bitcoin someone is selling you that bitcoin for tether. That person will go ahead and trade that tether for some other coin.... rinse repeat, but in the end someone is holding that Tether, if exchanges stop accepting tether eventually your only option is to cash out to USD. USDT is basically being used as a trade coin, to avoid cashing out (maybe to avoid taxation) or to speculate on USD with the intent to eventually redeem for USD.

At some point someone will try to cash out on the tether. And that's when we'll find out if Bitfinex really has the USD reserves to back that as they say they have.

But it's getting harder and harder to believe that money really exists.

Tether keeps getting printed by the millions specially when bitcoin is on a downtrend (just today 200M was printed). For some reason I doubt someone wrote them a check for 200M USD today.

Also Bitfinex never completed or released audits they promised.

The more you dig the more it looks like Bitfinex is printing fake money to pump cryptocoins.

I keep trying to wrap my head around the economics of this and maybe give Tether the benefit of doubt. I think the most damning technical detail is that there is no client-side wallet. We can't trade Tether amongst ourselves or engage in any trades that Tether doesn't have at least indirect control of.

Tether is a scam, 100%. It's fake money materialized out of thin air to pump Bitcoin.

The most damning thing for me is that none of the many exchanges trading tethers allow you to trade them for US dollars. The only way to cash out of tether now is to buy cryptocoins and transfer them to a non-tether exchange.

Yes you can. Tether is an asset on the Omni protocol and is expanding to ERC20

If $200M was printed today, then it likely doesn't exist. Hilarious that this is going on.

At some point the music has to stop.

Just as reference as the comment here was deleted. Pretty important stuff.

http://omnichest.info/lookupadd.aspx?address=3MbYQMMmSkC3AgW...

https://i.imgur.com/BsPSZKO.png

Basically I think the tether are fraudulent. I do not have proof but they likely are. What is the best way to make money on them? Can one short tether?

Good chance the interest rates will wipe you out before the price crashes.

If you're in the UK, try to find a bookie who'll take your bet.

It is possible to short tether on kraken platform...

Though good luck getting paid when shit hits the fan, Kraken will go down along with Tether.

There's a twitter account that tracks the printing of new Tether: https://twitter.com/tetherprinter

There was another $100m invented 11 hours ago, in addition to the $100m created on Monday.

Jesus, they've printed 250 million of them in the last three days!

Another 100m right now. So 350m in 3 days?

It's hard to catch a falling knife!

They don't really "print" a $200million. Finex explanation is that when a user requests USDT they issue new USDT from their USD reserves.

You really believe they added $200million to their USD reserves to cover the USDT?

Edit: Where would they get that USD?

With a dump truck full of unmarked dollars in small denominations in some dark Bangkok alley, provided by generous institutional investor. Obviously.

They say it's their "institutional investors", they never release who these are (some people say it's Bitfinex themselves), they never release what bank they use or which country is the money deposited in.

It's rotten to the core... The consensus is that they either don't have that money at all (most likely scenario) or that if they do it's all dirty money and they are operating a money laundry scheme....

Unless they would prove to the public and/or competent regulatory authorities that they definitely have done that, they should be considered as "printing" this money.

Proven reserves count, claimed reserves don't. If USDT is "covered" by reserves that are claimed but not verified, then USDT is not covered.

Tether did a fake "audit" to show they were legitimate: https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/the-so-called-tether-audit-th...

How does the printed tether enter the market?

Bitfinex buys cryptos with them on their own exchange. They get free cryptos, and everybody else gets monopoly money in exchange. Tether is such a scam it's unbelievable.

Bitfinex should then sell that crypto for real USD on other exchanges. They could make a killing and then somehow launder the money so that when the Tether scam is exposed, they are safe with real hard USDs.

I'm guessing the company offers them on some exchange, maybe slightly discounted.

The concept of tether is a good one.

I wish that a reputable company or YC startup would do exactly the same thing but in a very legitamate way.

It seems like they could make a good amount of money by charging withdrawal and transfer fees.

How does one keep track of each Tether-like coin's fiat backing?

Has it? https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/#charts

That's what I'm saying. If they are actually able to always trade at very close to USD every day for over a year, does not that show stability in the coin? If it is, in fact, printed money, then it keeps working so far. Just like USD.

Low trading volume on kraken, easy to wash trade to fix the price where you want.