Bloomberg Investigation Tries to Find $69 Billion in Tethers, Where’s It Hiding?

Largest Fraud in History

https://twitter.com/CryptoWhale/status/1446084617669386241

Chinese Commercial Paper 

Tether Lending 

https://twitter.com/ncweaver/status/1446100319113338882

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose 

Questionable Monetary Transfer

https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed/status/1446177147719196678

Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

Bloomberg columnist Zeke Faux asks Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?

A wild search for the U.S. dollars supposedly backing the stablecoin at the center of the global cryptocurrency trade—and in the crosshairs of U.S. regulators and prosecutors. Exactly how Tether is backed, or if it’s truly backed at all, has always been a mystery.

There are now 69 billion Tethers in circulation, 48 billion of them issued this year. That means the company supposedly holds a corresponding $69 billion in real money to back the coins—an amount that would make it one of the 50 largest banks in the U.S., if it were a U.S. bank and not an unregulated offshore company.

As far as the regulators are concerned, the size of Tether’s supposed dollar holdings is so big that it would be dangerous even assuming the dollars are real

The only official willing to talk to Faux was Jean Chalopin, the chairman of Deltec Bank & Trust in the Bahamas. 

But when I asked Chalopin if he knew for sure that Tether’s assets were fully secure now, he laughed. It was a difficult question, he said. He only held cash and extremely low-risk bonds for Tether. But recently the company had started using other banks to handle its money. Only a quarter of it—$15 billion or so—is still with Deltec. “I cannot speak about what I cannot know,” he said. “I can only control what’s with us.”

After I returned to the U.S., I obtained a document showing a detailed account of Tether Holdings’ reserves. It said they include billions of dollars of short-term loans to large Chinese companies—something money-market funds avoid. And that was before one of the country’s largest property developers, China Evergrande Group, started to collapse. I also learned that Tether had made loans worth billions of dollars to other crypto companies, with Bitcoin as collateral. One of them is Celsius Network Ltd., a giant quasi-bank for cryptocurrency investors, its founder Alex Mashinsky told me. He said he pays an interest rate of 5% to 6% on loans of about 1 billion Tethers. Tether has denied holding any Evergrande debt, but Hoegner, Tether’s lawyer, declined to say whether Tether had other Chinese commercial paper. 

The strange thing is that, at least for now, most participants in the crypto market, including some very large and sophisticated operators, don’t seem to care about any of the risks. Just last month, traders bought $3 billion in new Tethers, presumably sending billions of perfectly good U.S. dollars to the Inspector Gadget co-creator’s Bahamian bank in exchange for digital tokens conjured by the Mighty Ducks guy and run by executives who are targets of a U.S. criminal investigation.

Chalopin’s Two Claims to Fame

  1. A former child actor who’d missed a penalty shot in The Mighty Ducks. 
  2. Creator of Inspector Gadget 

Dismissed as FUD

Every bit of this, including the loans, the Chinese paper, and the fact that an investigation cay only locate $15 billion of an alleged $69 billion in assets is of course dismissed as FUD by crypto enthusiasts.

FUD stands for Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt

Fraud, missing money, Chinese paper, criminal investigations, who cares? 

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RonJ
RonJ
2 years ago
“Tether loans to friends, friends pump cryptocurrencies, tether is now backed by said loans, and they even have collateral, the cryptocurrency purchased that is now valued even higher…”
Corporations borrow billions of dollars, buy back the company stock, artificially pushing the price up even higher…
Eddie_T
Eddie_T
2 years ago
Mish must be writing about the jobs report. It was a miss, so one more domino falls as we slide toward stagflation.
KidHorn
KidHorn
2 years ago
I don’t feel sorry for any investor who lost money in this. Everything crypto is a pyramid scheme. Should be obvious to everyone.
thimk
thimk
2 years ago
Reply to  KidHorn
I agree , let it fail .  (no bailouts ! ) . the market will become “woke” . 
RonJ
RonJ
2 years ago
Reply to  KidHorn
Klaus Schwab: you will own nothing and be happy.
Biden wants banks to report any financial transaction we do, over $600, to be reported to the government. First it was $10,000, then it was $3,000. Now just $600.
One of the things Martin Armstrong writes about is past monetary crisis. Some kingdom was broke and the king confiscated the wealth of the Catholic Church or whatever.
Klaus Schwab: you will own nothing…
KidHorn
KidHorn
2 years ago
Reply to  RonJ
I think the $10,000 was only for cash transactions, which I admit is something to look at. Not many people who don’t own food establishments deposit and/or withdraw that kind of cash.
Eventually, they’ll have complete access to all banking accounts, if they don’t already. And they’ll get rid of cash, so they’ll know everything about every transaction.
PostCambrian
PostCambrian
2 years ago
If they had the funds it would be easy to show where they are. Grant Williams had an excellent podcast on the subject. link to ttmygh.podbean.com The big issue is that Tether has been used to bid up the price of Bitcoin. So if you can get Tether for less than face value or for free (due to fraud) then Bitcoin’s value is also not reflective of the “real” cash price. Either a big investigation will find the location of the funds or a run on Tether will show how short of funds they are.
Call_Me
Call_Me
2 years ago

Chalopin’s Two Claims to Fame

A former child actor who’d missed a penalty shot in The Mighty Ducks. 

Creator of Inspector Gadget

Something doesn’t square here.  The movie debuted in 1992 and the good inspector was created in 1983.  If those statements are about the same person, then they had one amazing childhood!

Eddie_T
Eddie_T
2 years ago
OT….Fiona Hill is the best intellect and the best writer to write a book about the Trump Presidency, and her book is the best book. She really gets most of the the problem set we’re facing, and she gets the dangerous spot Trump put us in…which we are still in, btw.
She has a few blind spots….but overall, I give her high marks for her take on the big picture.
Doug78
Doug78
2 years ago
Reply to  Eddie_T

She says in the video that we must make deep background
checks looking into every aspect of the lives of presidential candidates to
eliminate those who are not up to standards that they believe necessary. First
of all I would assume that the FBI and the CIA would be doing the background
checks which would mean that we would only be able to vote for someone on their
approved list. Secondly why stop at presidential candidates if the idea is
good? Should not all candidates for Congress have to come from the approved
list as well? It is a stretch of imagination to believe that given that amount
of power over elections that the FBI and the CIA would not end up abusing it.
There are many people on both sides of Congress that I abhor but they were elected
by their constituencies and you have to respect that because that is the
democratic process and it is by that means that new ideas and solutions get
into the system often by end running the entrenched, sclerotic bureaucracies and
existing power networks. Fiona Hill is an example of the latter and doesn’t see
that what she is proposing is a repudiation of democracy and under guise of
making the system better by having them chose who gets to run for office and
who does not is just a means to eternalize their power.

Eddie_T
Eddie_T
2 years ago
Reply to  Doug78
I think you’re looking for a bit of rope to hang her, before giving her a chance. First, she isn’t even saying what you’re trying to hear. You’re putting words in her mouth that she never said. 
I actually think she meant the PARTIES have a responsibility to vet their candidates, not just for poll numbers….but for fitness to serve, because the office of the Presidency is so legally privileged, and easily abused by a strongman. It’s very easy for an authoritarian to take advantage of the office and bend the rules. We certainly have seen that with Trump. It’s a practical impossibility to impeach a President whose party controls the Senate, and the Scalia interpretation of executive privilege basically lets a sitting President do anything he wants to do, pretty much
This book, which I am still reading, is very unique in its perspective, and well worth your time to read. Hill is a historian who wrote the book on Putin, and she also has a handle on the drivers of populism, which play in all this….The book is partly a memoir of a working class kid who (like me) managed to bootstrap herself out of poverty. She gets the way class divides us, both in Britain and here,
I will tell you that if I were teaching American history of the 21st century, this book would be assigned reading…..and it’s head and shoulders above the other books, including (I think) Woodward’s. I have yet to read more than excerpts from that one. I’d assign this book and Joe Bageant’s Deerhunting With Jesus to anyone who wants to get a handle on how we came to be where we now, as far as our current political predicament.
Doug78
Doug78
2 years ago
Reply to  Eddie_T

I haven’t read her book and I had no problem with her till I
ran into that sequence and I didn’t see her saying it was only up to the
parties and not up to a governmental agency to do that. Normally a party should
vet its candidates and they do as a matter of course. After all they do want to
win elections. It is not a revelation and hardly worth a mention because it is
common sense. However I definitely saw that she believes the Republican Party
should have not let Trump into the primary because she feels that he wasn’t president
material and shouldn’t have been allowed to run. One may like or dislike the
primary system but it does have the advantage of allowing new blood to get into
what would otherwise be a closed club open only to insiders whether it be of
the right or the left. It does come up with surprises some of which can be
necessary ones. The “smoke-filled room” method however hardly ever comes up
with surprises and ends up as a closed cabal running the party for their own benefit
and not for the voters. Nevertheless it had its advantages too. Ultimately it
is up to the voters to vet the candidates hopefully informed by the press in
the large sense and they choose.

Maybe I will read her book if I get around to it. For the
moment I am busy reading “Uncontrolled Spread” by Dr. Scott Gottlieb on the
Covid pandemic. I have already learned a lot about what was really going on in
late 2019 and early 2021. He takes pains to be nonpartisan unlike many who
write books these days.

Siliconguy
Siliconguy
2 years ago
Reply to  Doug78
So let the Praetorian Guard (now called the FBI) choose the President? I think not. The FBI’s moral authority died at Ruby Ridge. Their fast and loose behavior with FISA warrants proves they have not gotten better. 
Eddie_T
Eddie_T
2 years ago
Reply to  Siliconguy
I’m no fan of the FBI. They never had much moral authority as far as I’m concerned. But I think you, like Doug, are trying to throw the baby out with the bathwater. 
Doug78
Doug78
2 years ago
Reply to  Eddie_T
The last thing the FBI wants to do is to be vetting candidates for political parties. It’s a no-win situation for them and they know it. Eddie, I watched your video and I didn’t like that one thing she said. It is not a judgement on her or her knowlege. I am not throwing her out with the bathwater because I don’t know her. She proposed a solution I didn’t like too much to a problem
that is important to me also. That’s all.
Eddie_T
Eddie_T
2 years ago
Reply to  Doug78
Fair enough.  I value your opinion, and I know you’re serious about history….andthe most likely person here to actually read her book. I hope you find the time. I just thought it was very exceptional in this current sea of Trump tell-alls. 
Doug78
Doug78
2 years ago
Reply to  Eddie_T
I will read it but I have few  more in line before her.
RonJ
RonJ
2 years ago
Reply to  Eddie_T
Have you read about all the corruption that was going on inside the government, against trump?
Have you paid attention to the authoritarianism by democrat governors during Covid? Have you paid attention to Biden’s authoritarianism?
DeSantis got Disney world opened back up, while Newsom kept Disneyland shut down.
Eddie_T
Eddie_T
2 years ago
Reply to  RonJ
I watched the Dems try to the Trump down from day one in real time. I don’t need to read about it. I don’t deny that there is a Deep State, or claim that Democrats are noble fighters against corruption. But their sins, so far, have not caused us to elect a populist demagogue….I wouldn’t be surprised to see it, however, in the future.
But all these arguments of your are typical whatabout-isms that you Trump lovers are so good at….but they’re red herrings…. that do nothing to  absolve Trump of his many crimes, both petty and spectacular. Trump is a cheater and  liar who is still trying to overthrow Democracy and become the Erdogan/Duterte of the Untied States.
RonJ
RonJ
2 years ago
Reply to  Eddie_T
It is the Democrat Party that is trying to overthrow democracy. Open your eyes.

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