Posted by dcgudeman 2 days ago
BTW, Tether probably is backed 1:1 or better because they bought $XXB of US treasury bonds at >4% which return billions in profit per year. BTC is also (currently) near all time highs. Whatever hole they had was probably filled in.
The criminal investigation, run by prosecutors at the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, is looking at whether notes "tethered" to the Federal Reserve's "dollar" have been used by third parties to fund illegal activities such as the drug trade, terrorism and hacking—or launder the proceeds generated by them.
The Treasury Department, meanwhile, has been considering sanctioning the Federal Reserve because of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing's currency notes' widespread use by individuals and groups sanctioned by the U.S., including the terrorist group Hamas and Russian arms dealers. Sanctions against the Federal Reserve would generally prohibit Americans from doing business using the notes.
Tether is in a country that has a long history of doing monkey business, including monkey business with drug trafficking money and arms trafficking money. Even the CIA was tied to that monkey business.
To me there's zero doubt there's actual money laundering ongoing and I really wouldn't be surprised if, once again, some three letter agencies were implicated in monkey bahamian business.
I never forget the farcical interview with Deltec Bank's "Deputy CEO":
At the start of 2021, according to their website, it was a 55 year old bank. By the end of 2021, it was a 70 year old bank!
The bank's website is a WordPress site. And their customers must be unhappy - online banking hasn't worked for nearly two years at this point - take a look at the HTML source, there's no way it could actually work.
Anyway, their Deputy CEO gave this hilarious interview from his gaming rig. A 33 year old Deputy CEO, who by his LinkedIn claimed to have graduated HEC Lausanne in Switzerland with a Master of Science at the age of 15... celebrating his graduation by immediately being named Professor of Finance at a university in Lebanon. While dividing his spare time between running hedge funds in Switzerland and uhh... Jacksonville, FL.
The name of his fund? Indepedance [sic] Weath [sic] Management. Yeah, okay.
In this hilariously inept interview, he claimed that people's claims about Deltec's money movements being several times larger than all the banking in their country was due to them misunderstanding the country's two banking licenses, the names of which he "couldn't remember right now" (the Deputy CEO of a bank who can't remember the name of the banking licenses where they operate), and he "wasn't sure which one they had, but we might have both".
Once the ridicule and all this started piling on, within 24 hours, he was removed from the bank's website leadership page. When people pointed out how suspicious that looked, he was -re-added-.
The bank then deleted the company's entire website and replaced it with a minimally edited WordPress site, where most of the links and buttons were non-functional and remained so for months thereafter.
I mean fuck it, if the cryptobros want to look at all that and say "seems legit to me", alright, let em.
CEO of Tether - “As we told to WSJ there is no indication that Tether is under investigation. WSJ is regurgitating old noise. Full stop.”
Tether CEO additional statement on X - “At Tether, we deal regularly and directly with law enforcement officials to help prevent rogue nations, terrorists and criminals from misusing USDt. We would know if we are being investigated as the article falsely claimed. Based on that, we can confirm that the allegations in the article are unequivocally false.”
Someone tipped off the WSJ, and more will probably be developing
Good news can also drop, but there is a major asymmetry favoring bad news and liquidations, and consequently sudden drops of the Bitcoin price. You don't have to work at a hedge fund to find great methods like this.
It also shows why Bitcoin is an inferior investment compared to tech stocks, in which investors do not have to worry about these regulatory risks (except for antitrust, which is a slow, drawn-out process and this can be mitigated with diversification). QQQ has far outperformed Bitcoin even as far back as 2020.
U.S. "jurisdiction is triggered when a payment in U.S. dollars [takes] place and the U.S. financial system [is] used" [1].
EDIT: Tether withdrew from New York State's jurisdiction as part of its settlement with the New York AG [2], not to be confused with the U.S. attorney based in Manhattan.
[1] https://www.ziv.unibe.ch/unibe/portal/fak_rechtwis/c_dep_pri...
[2] https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2021.02.17_-_settlemen...