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Tether's deception: How to become a crypto central bank that is too big to fail

Read this article in 57 Minutes

If once we can trust that the dollars going into Bitcoin are real, then we can trust that the valuation of Bitcoin is also real.

Original title: "The Bit Short: Inside Crypto』s Doomsday Machine"

Original author: Crypto Anonymous

Original compilation: 0x26, 0x88

The author of this article is not An in-depth user in the industry, but a founder of a start-up company. Don't even know about contract trading until the in-depth research mentioned in the article. After reading the full text, the translator has reason to believe that the author only bought bitcoin from Coinbase, and his investment in the encryption industry only includes bitcoin, but just when he intends to continue to hold bitcoin for a long time, the news of Tether makes him The entire industry became skeptical, and on January 9, 2021, it liquidated its Bitcoin positions held from March 2020 to the present, realizing this so-called "life-changing" gain.

Read the full text, and follow the author to conduct in-depth research on Tether and its parent company, understand why he wants to give up Bitcoin, and how the encrypted stable currency market should go next.

This is a story about Bitcoin transactions—it is also the influence of this life on my "financial outlook" Biggest deal ever. It was also the in-depth study of the cryptocurrency ecosystem that led me to trade. This is the story of what's really going on with cryptocurrencies, and what exactly we should do about it.

Those who own a lot of cryptocurrency, or are considering buying some, you are my audience. Please read from beginning to end.

Foreword: Tether and its parent company

Before starting this story, there is some background knowledge that needs to be understood first.

Now there is something called Tethers (USDT) in the cryptocurrency field. In short, Tethers are issued by a centralized crypto company called Tether ltd Yes, it means that if Tether ltd says you own a Tether, then you own a Tether, simple as that.

Tether Ltd says each Tether is worth exactly one dollar. Can they really do it? They say they can, because each Tether is backed by $1 worth of assets.

But are these assets really dollars?

No, not really.

So, what if the value of these assets drops?

Don't worry, they won't.

Okay, but can we at least look at the assets behind it?

No, you can't.

Which normal person would use something like this? But actually in the cryptocurrency market, many people use Tether to buy Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The answer to this question is shockingly long—more on this later.

Tether sounds exactly like a currency fraud at this point, so you might be right Office of the District Attorney General survey will not surprise you, which was released to the public on April 25, 2019.

My transaction started in March

Go back a year now. In March 2020, I bought a large amount of Bitcoin. At that time, I saw the chaos in the entire capital market and the possibility of significant inflation of the US dollar due to the possible response of the US government to the spreading epidemic.

I guess Bitcoin is inflation resistant because of its inherent scarcity. I have to say that I also thought about the Tether issue at the time. I still remember the OAG investigation on Tether, but I thought that the Tether matter could only be regarded as old news, and the market had already abandoned Tether, so this influencing factor was ignored by me.

In retrospect, this was a huge mistake.

Become a HODLER

For the rest of 2020, my view on inflation is shared by the market. The turmoil in the U.S., combined with high lending and consumer spending triggered by the outbreak, looks likely to fuel real inflation in the dollar until the end of 2021. This means that over the same period, Bitcoin will become increasingly scarce.

The market seems to keep agreeing with my point of view. My Bitcoin value doubled and doubled again. By the end of the year, I was sitting on a 600% gain, a respectable pile of money in dollar terms.

I was going to hold bitcoin long term - never even thought of selling it, whatever it is how the daily price of .

Then, in early January, a forum post caught my attention.

Shocked

January On the 8th, I saw an article on Hacker News about Tether manipulating bits article on coin prices. This shocked me: I thought Tether had been purged from the crypto market, but apparently it still exists. But how much Tether is there in the crypto market? I think there shouldn't be that many.

However, I took a look, and I was surprised to find that the answer is:

Source: Coinlib

Left of the picture above The side shows which currencies flowed into crypto exchanges and bought bitcoin. On the right is shown which currencies are moving out of Bitcoin (that is, Bitcoin is being used to buy). This graph shows data as of early January 2021.

The result: Over two-thirds (worth 10 billion USD) are purchased via Tethers.

More importantly, this pattern is not unique to Bitcoin, I have found that other major cryptocurrencies are also So:

Source: Coinlib

Looks like I shouldn't ignore Tether. Tether is not a player in the crypto market - Tether is the crypto market.

Panic

This makes I am anxious. Most of my wealth is exposed to Bitcoin, and it looks like the Bitcoin exposure becomes Tether. Tether's issuing company is under investigation. So this gave me a strong motivation to find out if this risk really existed.

I cleared my schedule and started digging deeper. Clearly, if some or all of Tether's fund flows were faked, this would have a significant impact on the correct market price of Bitcoin. (While the $10 billion in Tether represents only 1.4% of Bitcoin's $700 billion face value, what really matters is that Tether accounts for almost 100% of Bitcoin's daily trading volume 70%.)

How can I know if Tether is a scam? A more convenient way may be to find out which exchanges Tether is trading on. I know that exchanges like Coinbase do strict due diligence to curb money laundering, and many others do not do this job well. So, which exchanges support Tether and which ones don't? Is there an efficient way of checking this?

The following is the transaction data of Coinbase Pro within 24 hours:

Source: Coinlib

Note that almost all of the money coming into the cryptocurrency space from here is in dollars, euros and pounds sterling, which are tightly controlled by the respective national authorities.

The following are Binance, Bit-Z and HitBTC cryptocurrency transaction data. HitBTC is the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by notional trading volume:

These pictures can clearly show us that almost all cryptocurrencies on these three trading platforms are traded using Tethers. No one buys with dollars at all.

And the number is huge. Coinbase Pro sees around $4 billion in cryptocurrency trades every day. But Binance alone has over $50 billion in trading volume, while the other two exchanges have larger trading volumes than Coinbase. Major cryptocurrencies that are traded on a daily basis have Tethers trading pairs on all three platforms.

Binance, Bit-Z and HitBTC are " unbanked" trading platforms. That means they don't have direct access to the U.S. financial system—most likely because no U.S. institution wants to act as their correspondent bank domestically. (Binance’s subsidiary Binance US does allow USD purchases. But its daily output is only 10% of Coinbase’s and less than 1% of the main station’s, so its impact on the crypto market is negligible)

It is difficult for crypto trading platforms to obtain bank support, but Bitstamp, Coinbase and several other high-quality trading platforms have maintained strong KYC and anti-money laundering (AML) ) mechanism to manage encrypted trading platforms.

But what I find most worrisome is that two of the most reputable US banking-backed trading platforms - Coinbase and Bitstamp - do not support Tether transactions at all. If Tether is right, there is no reason for them to forego the fees on this part of the transaction—unless their risk and compliance department believes that listing Tether is too much responsibility to bear.

Go deeper, go deeper

By now, I've started to worry that my Bitcoin position is too risky for me to continue holding. But I need more proof before I can close this massive deal.

I had to learn more about the background of Tether and try not to be influenced by the one-sided reports of the market news media. I found what I was looking for in the New York OAG investigative case summary of Tether Ltd (note that the defendants in the investigation are listed in the summary as "iFinex Inc., et al", not "Tether ltd." , the specific reason does not need too much explanation in this article.)

I will skip most of it——I strongly recommend that you Check out these documents — I Just to list three main points that appeal to me the most:

February 26, 2019Two months before the official investigation, OAG solicited a large number of documents from Tether ltd . The purpose is to help OAG understand how Tethers are issued, endorsed assets and audited, and how Tether flows in the crypto ecosystem.

From the official investigation on April 25, 2019 to July 9, 2020, almost 15 months, Tether ltd The OAG investigation presents a series of challenges that appear to be designed to delay a response to the OAG's request for documentation.

On July 9, 2020, the New York Supreme Court rejected Tether Ltd.'s final appeal, effectively forcing Tether Ltd. to comply with OAG's documents Require. More importantly, Judge J. Gesmer thoroughly dissects every aspect of Tether Limited's argument (link), indicating that Tether’s appeal is not a challenge to the document request at all, but It is more likely that it is an attempt to delay the publication of the document the means used.

Things are looking bad. But then a question popped into my head: Did anything else significant happen to Tether on or around July 9, 2020?

So I did some research. Then something interesting was discovered.

Source: Coinmarketcap

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The graph above shows the market capitalization of all Tethers issued between January 13, 2019 and January 13, 2021 (blue curve). Because one Tether is nominally equal to $1, the total market capitalization of Tethers in U.S. dollars is always equal to the number of Tethers. (Numbers on the y-axis do not represent market capitalization. But to their scale, the highest point of the blue curve corresponds to $25 billion.)

The first red arrow on the chart points to April 25, 2019, when OAG announced an investigation. Note that as the investigation progressed, the rate of Tether issuance began to rise — initially in single large issuances, at roughly $1 billion every few months.

The second arrow on the chart is July 9, 2020: New York Court Ruling Forces Tether Corporation to Begin Submitting to OAG The date on which its documents were disclosed. Two weeks after the ruling, Tether ltd. issued another batch of Tethers with a nominal value of about $800 million. Not long after, on September 1st, the Tethers company’s issuance model completely changed.

Since September, Tether has started to issue multiple large-scale issuances every day. Issuance accelerated, with $2.3 billion worth of Tether issued in the first week of 2021 alone.

This is consistent with the possibility that, as various legal actions by Tether Corporation have failed one after another in New York courts, The Tether Company chose to issue Tethers as quickly as possible in order to extract maximum value from the crypto ecosystem before closing. Tether’s final disclosure deadline will come on January 15, 2021.

After finding out the above questions, I still need to answer one last question. Is Tether Issuance Really Correlated With Bitcoin's Price? Glancing at the chart, I got a clear yes:

There are three relatively major Tether release periods on this graph:

2019 April to July 2019;

April to July 2020;

September 2020 to present. All three periods overlap with visible growth in Bitcoin’s market price. (The red arrows here point to the same two dates as in the Tether diagram above.)

This is not a conclusive chart: it still doesn't prove that Tether issuance was the cause of Bitcoin's price increase. It is still possible that retail demand for Bitcoin sends real dollars into Tether Corporation through some unknown mechanism; Tether Corporation then issues Tethers in exchange for those dollars; and USDT issued through Tethers is used to buy Bitcoin. In this case, Tether's rise is caused by the demand for Bitcoin, and there may be enough US dollars behind Tether.

Nevertheless, based on much of the above data, I conclude that my risk is now too great. I've been staring at Bitcoin; and Bitcoin is obviously related to Tether; Tether is obviously being issued at a crazy rate, and there is a good chance that there is no asset backing behind this issuance.

Then, I typed a Phone: Time to leave.

Exit

On January 9, 2021, I settled my cryptocurrency position in USD. This maneuver allowed me to lock in a dollar-denominated gain that, in the interest of full disclosure, can only be described as life-changing.

Have to say, I still don't have the whole situation. For example, I still think it is possible for Tether to be backed by real assets. My thinking is this: "70% of Tether flowing into Bitcoin, some parts are real; some parts are real but illegal (for example, buying drugs); some parts are purely fake. , but I know it's over my personal risk threshold."

I was still a little Worrying about being wrong. Tether may be largely true — if it turns out to be true, I'm missing the boat.

Then, by sheer luck, I had a conversation that blew me away.

Epiphany

I am Video chat with my friend Bob (pseudonym). I just sold my bitcoin position and nervously waited for confirmation from my bank that my USD wire had cleared. Cryptocurrencies have been on my mind, so I asked Bob about it.

The content of the conversation is as follows:

Me: You don’t have crypto, do you? I’m concerned that some of the exchanges in this ecosystem may be fraudulent.

Bob: Well, I actually have a whole bunch of cryptocurrencies on that exchange called Bybit. Do you think there are any problems with this transaction?

Me: I'm not sure. Does it let you trade in dollars?

Bob: No, but neither can many other trading platforms. In fact, you can’t even deposit USD directly into a Bybit account.

Me: Really? But how do you transfer money to their trading platform if they don't accept USD deposits?

Bob: You send your dollars to Coinbase and you use them to buy bitcoins. Then you transfer the bitcoins to Bybit, where they are traded.

Me: Wait. If that's the case, why would anyone use an offshore trading platform that only does coin-to-crypto transactions without bank backing? What does Bybit give you that Coinbase doesn't?

Bob: Leverage. I personally only use 2-3X leverage, but they let you use 100X leverage if you want. You can't do that on Coinbase.

I: *panting heavily*

Bob: They also do a lot of marketing. They have a lot of timed tasks, and you can earn Tethers by inviting friends to communicate, joining their Telegram group, or trading on their platform.

Me: HOLY $#!@

Bob: But thanks for the warning! I'll get the crypto out as soon as possible. This might take me a few minutes, but I need to start my VPN first.

Me: VPN? Ah, why?

Bob: Because I need to fake a Bolivian ISP to get into the exchange. If you're in the US, it's illegal to use them.

Me: *Blood rushes to my brain instantly*

< /p>

There is a scene in The Big Short where Mike Baum meets a stripper who takes out mortgages on five properties. The stripper doesn't think there's anything wrong with it because her mortgage broker told her she could always refinance when house prices went up. And prices always go up.

Up until that moment in the movie, Mike's investigations revolve around bonds, mortgage rates, and CDOs expand. But seeing that stripper fleshed out his view of the market: Mike saw the guy on the other side of the mortgage. It's what ultimately convinced him to short the housing market.

For me, this conversation with Bob represented: my first taste of what it’s like to be on the harvest side of a cryptocurrency “doomsday machine” Feel.

The evidence is solid

and Bob's conversation changed my mind about Tether. I no longer see Tether as a source of excessive risk. I now think it's highly likely that this all was a hoax.

Exchanges such as Bybit and Binance that mainly trade Tether, provide people like Bob Benefits don't seem to be proportional to the income earned from the deal.

In order to find out about these benefits, I anonymously googled "Cryptocurrency Exchange Incentives". The top of the output gives an exchange website page, which reads, "We have a special year-end bonus event, and we will provide eligible users with a $500 savings coupon [Tether]!"

A similar search for "Coinbase perks" on the Coinbase.com domain, on the other hand, returned zero first-page results. This shows that offshore trading platforms are more willing to give away Tethers than Coinbase is giving away USD, which means that offshore exchanges believe that Tethers should be worth less than they should be.

Now that I know what to look for, things are starting to fall into place. First, I found this thread on Twitter stating that " Tethers" are minted in exact, perfect integers. (In the screenshot below, "USDT" is Tether's code.)

This is highly abnormal: If the demand for Tethers is genuine, it is understandable that the Tether Corporation would combine investors' multiple dollar deposits into a single block offering. But such combinations shouldn't add up to perfect integers every time. What's more, USD assets that are supposed to be deposited (eg, $401,431,056 in the top left transaction) are given full Tethers (eg, 400,000,000 USDT in the same transaction) at every large issue—regardless of the current exchange rate or any other factor.

In itself, this is unbelievable. But when you compare it to USD Coin’s issuance model — Coinbase’s own stablecoin backed by regularly audited actual U.S. dollar reserve assets — the difference is stark. (In the screenshot below, "USDC" is the code for USD Coin.)

The way Coinbase issues its USD Coins is very different from the way Tether Corporation issues Tether. USD Coins are issued in small, variable sizes: Tether ranges in size from 150 million to 400 million, while USD Coins range in size from 7 million to $60 million.

The issuance of USD Coin also has a seemingly random amount (for example, 9,374,133 USDC at the top of the graph above). This random number would only make sense if Coinbase were indeed pooling the actual dollar demand of an unrelated group of investors into each offering.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was when I discovered the lack of bookable reserves hour. If the Tether company is really issuing each tether at $1, it should have as many dollars in its bank account as it issues Tethers. As it turns out, we can verify that this is true! Tether’s bank is Deltec Bank in the Bahamas, which discloses how much foreign currency its domestic banks hold each month.

The answer is - at least until the end of September 2020 - not enough:

;

Source: TwitterAnti -Washing Center

From January 2020 to September 2020, all domestic banks in the Bahamas The total of all foreign currency holdings increased by only $0.6 billion, from $4.7 billion to $5.3 billion (tables are in Bahamian dollars, but the Bahamian dollar is pegged to the U.S. dollar, so 1 BSD = $1)

But over the same period, the total number of Tethers issued has increased by nearly $5.4 billion, from $4.6 billion to $10 billion!

The implication is shocking: Not all domestic banks in the Bahamas have enough U.S. dollars to back Tethers flowing in the crypto market.

; Tether company has USD acceptance gap.

Review the big picture of cryptocurrency

After the latest round of research, I wait anxiously. I've sold out all my bitcoin positions, but I'm still waiting for the bank transfer to complete. I still have to bear the counterparty risk of this transfer until I fully exit this market which I believe is built on a scam.

While waiting, I combined my knowledge of Bob's experience with other evidence, allowing me to Have a big picture of the core logic of the fraud. Here's how it works:

1. Cryptocurrency investor Bob puts $100 worth of real dollars into Coinbase.

2. Bob then uses these dollars to buy $100 worth of bitcoins on Coinbase.

3. Bob transfers his $100 worth of bitcoins to an unbanked exchange like Bybit .

4. Bob starts trading on Bybit and gets various benefits - all denominated in Tether.

5. Tether Ltd. buys Bob’s Bitcoin from the exchange with Tether.

6. Tether Ltd. transfers Bob’s bitcoins to a bank-backed exchange like Coinbase.

7. Finally, Tether Ltd. sold Bob’s Bitcoin for USD on Coinbase and exited the crypto market.

My guess is that Tether Ltd. (via a proxy account) is only responsible for a small percentage of purchases on these exchanges . But with $50 billion going in and out of Binance every day, even a fraction of that $50 billion is a huge amount of revenue. When you're in the business of exchanging fake dollars for real dollars, your profit margins are high.

In the example above, Tether Ltd. purchased his bitcoins from Bob with Tethers at face value, The price difference between Tether and USD is exactly the service fee that Bob needs to pay for using high leverage in Bybit and obtaining various benefits. Moreover, all the leveraged transactions and benefits Bob has received are denominated in Tether. I suspect that these Tethers were transferred to the exchange by Tether Ltd., so that the exchange can acquire users through subsidies.

This also explains how Tether was able to maintain its peg to the U.S. dollar on non-coin-based offshore exchanges. With a given amount of Bitcoin, traders are able to spend far more Tether than publicly available exchange rates can justify. Exchanges record the extra Tethers as being used for "leverage" and "benefits", which also allows exchanges to tell the story that these "free" Tethers were not used to buy Bitcoin-even if this is is part of the goodie package that Bob gets for selling his bitcoins.

From this point of view, the fact that offshore exchanges do not support US dollars is a feature rather than a loophole: to prevent US dollars and Tether's meeting in a transparent market is critical to ensuring that the true price of Tether remains opaque - making it difficult for outsiders to dispute the $1 peg.

Leave aside the offshore exchanges, just imagine from God’s perspective, if Coinbase and the United States The financial system is connected, and you will see two rows of people, one row of crypto asset traders, who keep putting in dollars, and the other row of scammers, taking dollars away.

An hour after I finally sorted out my confused thoughts, I received a notice from the bank. The money in my exchange has already arrived in my bank.

I can finally quit.

Conclusion: Land of the Blind

In daily life At work, I'm the founder of a fairly successful startup. So, my Twitter following often leads me to posts from other founders and VCs. Generally speaking, these people are kind, very intelligent, and have a strong ability to understand the market.

However, this kind of Crypto Tweet is very common in the startup community:

;

These are well respected people in the community. I have met some of these people in person and am impressed by their kindness and insight. Also, I must admit that I have privately expressed similar views on Bitcoin during the recent bubble.

What happened? What keeps this community under such a big scam?

I think part of it can be attributed to lack of liquidity.

In an illiquid market you are not immediately redeemable. The liquidity of the entrepreneurial ecosystem is very low: it takes founders years or even decades to cash out of the businesses they build. The founders of startups, and the VCs backing them, are mostly experienced in dealing with illiquid markets.

Cheaters don’t like illiquid markets. Scammers want instant cash: the longer they stay in one place, the better their chances of getting caught. Not at all!) No liars. This also makes working in this ecosystem very enjoyable, but it also means that this kind of community lacks the ability to detect scammers.

However, the entrepreneurial community has the following characteristics: 1) start small; 2) grow fast; 3) challenge the status quo ; 4) Misunderstood by the public. These are the characteristics of a promising startup! The community understands that these characteristics are invaluable.

Unfortunately, these also happen to be hallmarks of a scam. Since the startup community hasn't seen too many scams, the community generally thinks the chances of them happening are low -- but in the cryptocurrency space, it's a serious problem. Unlike startups, cryptocurrency is an extremely liquid market, which is what attracts scammers. This means that many projects in the crypto community that look like promising startups are actually scams.

However, the blockchain is indeed a technology with great potential. Decentralization and censorship resistance are valuable; trustless Smart contracts are valuable; so are the Schelling points of scarce assets. The startup community does rightly recognize the existence of these underlying values. But if you don't have rich fraud prevention capabilities, it is very difficult to estimate the value of this part.

I believe that the anti-fraud ability of the entrepreneurial community will soon be cultivated. For anyone with a large amount of cryptocurrency, the tuition required to develop fraud prevention skills should or must be paid.

So, at this point, there are still a few questions left.

Can we break this scam now?

So is there any way for us to expose this scam immediately so as to reduce the number of victims? I believe there are.

Compliant cryptocurrency exchanges like Coinbase and Bitstamp clearly know to stay away from Tether: none of their platforms support Tether. Everything is mutual! If Tether Ltd. allowed a fully liquid market between Tether and USD, then the scam would be immediately apparent to all as Tether’s market clearing price drops below $1.

Kraken is the largest bank-backed exchange that supports the Tether/USD trading pair. The trading volume of the Tether/USD trading pair on Kraken is not large, Only about 1600 per day million US dollars, Tether Ltd. needs to pay close attention to the trend of this trading pair. Because every time someone sells Tether for USD on Kraken, Tether Ltd. has no choice but to make a purchase, otherwise they risk Tether depegging USD, then the scam will be exposed globally.

My guess is that maintaining the Tether/USD peg on Kraken is the biggest ongoing capital in the whole scam expenditure. If the crooks can’t cobble together enough USD to support Tether’s peg on Kraken, then it’s game over and the whole thing will spiral out of control. This is the weakness of the scam.

To be clear: Every time you sell Tether on Kraken, you are forcing Tether Ltd. to pay in USD. If you could sell enough Tethers on Kraken for dollars, Tether Ltd. would run out of dollars, and the machine that currently accounts for 70% of all crypto transaction traffic would collapse.

Hedge fund managers with deep pockets may want to re-read the above paragraph and think about its implications.

How can we stop this from happening again?

I have a few suggestions.

New York OAG should ask the court to issue an injunction prohibiting further issuance of Tether. This ban needs to be enacted as soon as possible. Not only is it about the livelihoods of countless Americans and their families, but allowing this pseudo-dollar-equivalent currency to continue to be issued without any asset backing or regulation would be about how the U.S. controls the flow of its money Ability.

It needs to be clear that the US authorities should take this very seriously. Broadly speaking, there are currently unregulated foreign entities printing and minting dollars with impunity. We have reason to believe that this is a malicious direct attack on the dollar, and the longer it lasts, the more likely it is to damage the integrity of the entire US financial system.

The U.S. Treasury Department should implement a 100% reserve ratio requirement for all USD-pegged encrypted stablecoins and enforce review. There is real potential in the crypto market - the startup ecosystem in crypto is doing something right! ——However, If the industry is full of fraud, scams, then the potential of the crypto market will not be fully realized. While over-regulation is indeed a problem, it has been going on for too long and at such a large scale that we need a mechanism to guarantee sufficient reserves for stablecoin issuers.

Healthy regulation will make the ecosystem more valuable. Bitcoin itself may be trustless, but if Bitcoin is purchased with "fake" dollars, then the dollar value of Bitcoin will be "fake" as well. Once we can trust that the dollars going into Bitcoin are real, then we can trust that the valuation of Bitcoin is also real.

What is the original intention of writing this article?

Before talking to Bob, here is how I thought about it: the more mysterious the field, the more room for money. After talking to Bob, however, I see it differently - from the eyes of an actual person who got into a dangerous deal.

There are thousands of Bobs in this world, many of them on unbanked exchanges With Tether, more people are buying and trading each day. When everything collapses, no one will be spared, not a sliver will be left.

This is bad enough in normal times, but when things go wrong, it all becomes devastating. Millions of personal and family assets will be destroyed. This is not a game: the pain it will inflict on people will be enormous. The longer a deception goes on, the more pain there will be.

The purpose of writing this article is to prevent this tragedy from happening.

The following is the information I collected during my investigation:

- Patrick McKenzie's This blog clearly depicts the state of Tether before October 2019.

- Matt Levine on Bloomberg Concerns about Tether.

- Cryptocompare provides historical data, showing the amount of currency inflow into Bitcoin.

- The following twitter account was very insightful: @coloradotravis, @ Bitfinexed [private], @ DrHOSP1, @BennettTomlin, @ patio11. (Please note that Twitter appears to be intermittently suspending certain accounts discussing issues related to Tether. Some accounts listed here may be temporarily inaccessible.)

The content of this article is my personal opinion, not Must reflect the position of any individual or organization with whom I may be or have been a member.

I have chosen to publish this article anonymously, but I may decide to identify myself at some point in the future. Below is a SHA-256 showing my real name, in order to claim authorship of this article, I will generate my name using an account I control.

35a7b6e1eddac723b0097551f9a6768a8a48009255956bdbae0b2f38d75b13e9