For the US Treasury market, the players are not small. Maybe that was believable for the commercial paper dealings for Tether, but you can just directly buy from the US Treasury at auction, or go through a banking partner like Deltec Bank, and none of "the players" will know anything about you.
> You can’t roll billions in treasuries without all the major players knowing who you are.
Of course you can. Direct and indirect bidders for US Treasury bills are routinely in the dozens of billions. No need to go through a primary dealer.
> And if they did they would release their cusips and put this to bed as there is only downside for them by withholding the cusips
Would you honestly be convinced if their attestation reports included CUSIPs? Do you think that people would still clamor for an audit and just move the goalposts to "anyone can look up CUSIPs for US Treasuries. Why aren't the primary dealers confirming their purchases?"
> Would you honestly be convinced if their attestation reports included CUSIPs?
Yes because that would be verifiable and we could know the counterparty holding them and ask for verification. If they verified they are holding those cusips for Tether then we're good.
And I don't' think you understand the treasury market as well as you think you do. Its a very transparent market. Everyone knows all the players, especially at the 10's of billions size.
If they honestly were buying treasuries through Deltec then we would know, I assure they they are not as Deltec doesn't really participate in this market
That's not exactly how it works. You can't make 4.75% of $67B if you never had $67B in real dollars. They could have as well never received any USD / fiat.
They mean there is no proof they issued tether for real money, and instead they could have issued it for collateral in crypto or IOU by other crypto entities.
Which would explain why nobody in the financial industry knows them even if they supposedly manage 60B$.
Why would you exchange tether for crypto or IOUs that are super risky and have no cash flow instead of risk free dollars that you get to keep the interest? First one sounds like suicide while the second is a very lucrative business.
Because it costs them nothing to "create" 1M USDT and exchange it for nothing. So, they create 1M USDT out of thin air, and "sell" it to some crypto exchange that wants to claim it can redeem 1M$, in exchange for some other crypto or IOUs or whatever. The exchange is happy because it can now sell 1M more USDT. Tether is happy because they got something that is nominally worth 1M$ at no cost to them.
Of course, someone somewhere in the future will be left holding the bag. But if they can keep it going, and if they do manage to sell some USDT for real money (which they certainly did), then they can still make a load of profit.
Because no banks will work with them and the US gov’t is constantly trying to track them down - and has a stranglehold on USD banking in the world. Read the NYAG report, it’s pretty crazy.
> Launched in 2014, Tether (USDT) came to extraordinary success with a current market capitalization exceeding 67 billion USD.
> This stablecoin fixes the issues inherent in the previous three. It relies not upon volatile reserves or the idea of persistent arbitrage trading, but on hard reserves of fiat currency. For every Tether coin in existence, there is one US dollar in a vault backing its existence.
> In this way, the stablecoin handles a complete theoretical rout with ease. Tether continues to serve the burgeoning digital asset space while garnering the implicit affection of regulators.
That's not as concerning as a bank that lent money to FTX, though, right? If you take a loan from someone that goes bankrupt, you pay them back through whatever process is established by the bankruptcy court. If you loan money to someone that goes bankrupt, you're most likely sitting on a loss.
Deltec's response is that they're awaiting instructions on how to repay the loan:
It’s quite concerning because it seemed to be off the books/hidden originally, SBF is one of the few who claims he’s been able to issue or redeem tether, it’s ‘Tethers bank’, and SBF is implicated in one of the largest crypto frauds in history.
Can anyone chime in as to what the fiduciary responsibility is if you have a liability but no responsibility to pay it? If I promise to store $1 for every $1 taken but also don't agree to actually ever pay out, is it illegal to not actually store the $1, or is it just dishonest?
why is that? Do you mean that they could buy tether back at a lower price than they issued it at, and thus pocket the difference?