[HN Gopher] Tether reveals partnerships with Secret Service, FBI...
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Tether reveals partnerships with Secret Service, FBI in letter to
U.S. Senate
Author : ironyman
Score : 128 points
Date : 2023-12-30 18:10 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (finance.yahoo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (finance.yahoo.com)
| Animats wrote:
| Each _disabled_ token is pure profit to Tether. They 're not
| cashing them out to the US Treasury, as with Bitcoins recovered
| from criminal operations.
| crypt1d wrote:
| Neither of those statements is true. Bitcoin seized by US
| government is often sold off in auctions[1]. Tether seized by
| the government could also be redeemed for fiat eventually,
| following due process.
|
| [1] -
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/brandonkochkodin/2023/03/31/us-...
|
| EDIT: I see now that you were actually comparing the case of
| USDT freeze against Bitcoin seizures. Nevertheless, Tether
| doesn't simply get to keep the USD value of the frozen tokens.
| US government would want to recover that.
| denlekke wrote:
| "disable its tokens" "freezing 326 wallets" no indication
| from this article that the tether has been seized /
| transferred
| crypt1d wrote:
| Tokens are frozen "in-place" pending investigation. It
| differs from how it works with btc, because the government
| does not have control of the private keys that manage the
| addresses in question - so they go to Tether who controls
| the smart contract that manages the transactions of the
| tokens.
|
| This, in practice, means that the US government controls
| the mentioned tokens for the moment. What happens with them
| depends entirely on the outcome of the investigation.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| It's an interesting question: What does that mean?
|
| Maybe it's better to look at cryptocurrencies as financial
| securities, shares in an asset controlled by a private company
| (as has been said many times before). Could General Electric
| 'disable' the shares of a shareholder? What would that mean?
| The shareholder can't sell their shares, I suppose, but GE's
| equity would remain the same (not counting any market movement
| that would be caused by the sale).
|
| Imagine a monetary system where currency was profit to a
| private company. What will our once-proud industry think of
| next? Software to help landlords collude, take housing off the
| market, and jack up rents? Software that impersonates humans,
| as well as any form of truth? We are on a roll!
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Notably, this is a coin used by a lot of cryptominers, many of
| whom are Chinese who fled the ban in China on crypto mining and
| also to export their wealth in a way they can't otherwise because
| China doesn't allow transfer of currency out of the country.
|
| Example:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/25/technology/bitrush-bitcoi...
|
| ...so now gigawatts of electricity are being used here to
| generate more wealth for chinese billionaire playboys who are so
| stingy they can't even pay rural local electricians. Must be
| because of how expensive his tuition is...
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Real estate is how China allows their citizens to move money
| out of country. If the money is at all legitimate, there is a
| vehicle.
|
| I've been around the world, and I've been as much Chinese real
| estate as I've seen, makes me think there is very little
| legitimate money in crypto for this application.
| Supermancho wrote:
| You're not the only one to have seen the Chinese real estate,
| from the Alberta coast to Florida. If you want to move money,
| ofc you can[1]. There is commerce with China. If you want to
| avoid controls (including punitive ones), real estate is not
| a preferred choice. This "vehicle" took a huge hit around
| 2016ish[2], which is why Chinese transfers fell dramatically
| crashing a number of luxury markets (US locales) with it.
| This is still recent memory and taken into commensurate
| consideration.
|
| [1] https://hrone.com/blog/expats-can-get-earned-money-china-
| leg... [2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-issuing-strict-
| controls-o...
| tz18 wrote:
| The Alberta coast??
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Completely unrelated to a previously unknown link to the US
| government...
|
| I am reminded that this is the cryptocurrency a lot of people
| were expecting a violent crash from.
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| CIA not FBI, I don't understand why the press love to never
| mention the CIA, let alone the NSA
|
| Yet another evidence of the correlation between
| creation/development of cryptocurrencies and plans for a digital
| USD
| denlekke wrote:
| would love to read more if you have a link [edit: re CIA
| connection]
| y8bj wrote:
| Google USD digital currency and you'll see all the usual
| media outlets propagating the idea in concept to normalize it
| y8bj wrote:
| I like how I wrote something that's verifiably true in
| technical language and it's downvoted.
|
| If you all thought I was saying media doing media things is
| good or bad, that's your bias.
|
| No surprise the social web is dying; nothing but knee jerk
| reactionaries seeing their ideology besmirched in every
| comment made.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| You're being downvoted because when the user asked if
| there was any more reading material you told them "google
| it". That's rude and unhelpful.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| The letter reported here specifically mentions the FBI and
| doesn't mention the CIA. The press doesn't mention the CIA
| because it isn't in the letter the article is about.
| https://assets.ctfassets.net/vyse88cgwfbl/6KDtp7U4IcH03zPWnp...
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| Of course, now ask yourself what the FBI will to an
| organization that's washing money using crypto in Qatar? What
| the FBI gonna do?
|
| FBI = domestic
|
| letter:
|
| "as we continue to assist law enforcement and expand dollar
| hegemony globally."
|
| globally, what the FBI gonna do globally?
|
| CIA has all 'rights' and capacity to act as whoever they want
|
| Up to the reader to critically think in a way that permits
| yourself to ask, again, "what the FBI gonna do globally?"
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/dyp7vw/the-cia-is-deep-
| into-... (imagine asking yourself if CIA/NSA are the creator
| of Bitcoin, the heresy! ban him!)
| snowwrestler wrote:
| The FBI has offices around the world.
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| Again, what they gonna do globally? What's their mission?
| Is it to "as we continue to assist law enforcement and
| expand dollar hegemony globally."?
| kristjank wrote:
| That _might_ explain why it has not crashed completely yet. As a
| rule of thumb, never trust service providers that should, by all
| common sense, fail, but miraculously don 't.
| codebolt wrote:
| For me the test is: What unethical action would optimize
| profits for company X? And what is the control mechanism that
| prevents them from doing so? If the answer to question 2 is
| None, there's a good possibility the answer to 1 is already
| happening.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| The thing is, a lot of people just assume they must simply be
| doing good business. The continued existence of the
| economically impossible entity is, to many, proof not only of
| its solvency, but also of it's quality as a financial partner.
|
| Most people don't look any further than that. Obviously, a
| large number do look further than that, and many, many people
| would never take the bait. But don't underestimate the number
| of people, even well resourced people, who would fall for this
| sort of scheme.
| kranke155 wrote:
| This totally explains it. Tether should have been on the same
| court as FTX.
| Facemelters wrote:
| ?
| scaredginger wrote:
| Can you explain this 'common sense'? I was under the impression
| that Tether was in the business of taking USD (with the promise
| of returning it) and earning interest on that USD without
| paying any interest on it. If that's true, it sounds like a
| dream business to me
| wmf wrote:
| That's what business they say they're in, but in reality they
| do things like (A) get nearly a billion dollars seized by the
| US for money laundering, (B) invest in risky Chinese
| corporate bonds, and (C) issue USDT loans backed by volatile
| crypto. They're usually solvent but they have been insolvent
| at various points in their history.
| fsmv wrote:
| The common sense is that they would make a lot more money by
| doing fractional reserve (leaving them open to a bank run
| collapse) and there is nothing really to stop them from doing
| that.
| charcircuit wrote:
| I do not think this is surprising. DAI is a better alternative if
| you want a stablecoin that can't be frozen.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| "Tether seeks to be a world class partner to the U.S. as we
| continue to assist law enforcement and expand dollar hegemony
| globally."
|
| Well that's an interesting statement, saying the quiet part loud
| (About dollar hegemony)
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Are they sophisticated enough in public communication to try,
| in passing, to spread the gospel of cryptocurrency: the
| dollar's market power is 'hegemony'.
|
| (I know the expression is already used, but not by the
| government and its partners, afaik, and not as an explicit
| goal.)
| delabay wrote:
| To those who think tether is a massive fraud: time to get caught
| up. The crypto dollar market is extremely large, the product
| market fit is extremely real and tether is king.
|
| https://t.co/caUMlsufXA
| woodruffw wrote:
| Weird phrasing. It isn't clear that responding to OFAC listings
| makes one a "partner" of the FBI or Secret Service; to my
| knowledge, entities that do business in the US (or anywhere the
| US's financial limbs can reach) _have_ to respond to OFAC
| listings.
|
| Am I missing something here?
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(page generated 2023-12-30 23:00 UTC)