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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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we mostly have Chinese corporate paper

According to whom? A majority of their reserves are US treasuries according to BDO as of September 2022.

If you take a quick look at the market cap, about 20 billion Tether has been redeemed for USD since May 2022. You're giving the 2021 argument but we've moved on since then. Now that it's not printing billions a month but actually had billions withdrawn the last few months, does that invert your conclusion?

BDO:

Our opinion is limited solely to the CRR and the corresponding consolidated total assets and consolidated total liabilities as of 30 September 2022. Activity prior to and after this time and date was not considered when testing the balances and information described above.

They just confirmed that Tether claimed they had so and so assets on paper - not whence and why. It's literally meaningless. But sure, avoiding an audit for 5 years, and changing their claims of holdings many times is totally a string of bonafide grade-a deeds of trustworthiness!

If you collate redemption events with outside events, it's rather clear most is just drawing numbers down entirely. SBF's plots alone involved billions of Tether which were wiped off the books without fiat appearing. Tether created the tokens out of nothing and then wiped them later. Now, I don't just mean a few billions. Alameda and Cumberland received 70% of all Tether. There are concrete examples like 3 Arrows "redeeming" more than 2x the Tether it supposedly had accumulated around May. Now, in March it continued receiving more Tether - but directly on exchanges instead of its historical wallets.

There are many fun treatments like: https://protos.com/tether-papers-crypto-stablecoin-usdt-investigation-analysis/

Are you saying it wasn't a scam on the 30th of September but it was before and after? Or are you saying they just took Tether's word for it?

From the end of page 1, halfway down through page 2 it lists all the things they did. They checked over the blockchain records, they got confirmation letters from banks, looked for the collateral in the loans... Not what I'd call 'confirming that Tether claimed things'.

Or are you saying they just took Tether's word for it?

Yes.

Learn some accounting. They go through significantly more scrutiny when you buy a house. Tether has been shown to double or quadruple count assets in the past. Tether has been shown to literally make things up. Plenty of other friendly actors move 10x the assets into an account then remove it the day after.

From the end of page 1, halfway down through page 2 it lists all the things they did. They checked over the blockchain records, they got confirmation letters from banks, looked for the collateral in the loans... Not what I'd call 'confirming that Tether claimed things'.

That was a hit piece against Tether you know. They investigated it and found large amounts of bs and contradictory flows, not BDO.

In 2017 https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-ends-virtual-currency-trading-platform-bitfinexs-illegal

Tether published a self-proclaimed ‘verification’ of its cash reserves, in 2017, that it characterized as “a good faith effort on our behalf to provide an interim analysis of our cash position.” In reality, however, the cash ostensibly backing tethers had only been placed in Tether’s account as of the very morning of the company’s ‘verification.’

It disappeared the same day.

In march, Tether claimed 4.96 billion in "other investments (including digital currencies)" when the crypto market was over 2 trillion. After it dropped under 900 million a few months later, Tether claimed 5 billion. The numbers they claim are verifiable bullshit.