Amy Castor is a journalist who investigates cryptocurrency, covering Tether, NFTs, Signal and MobileCoin, and market collapses.
HN commenters recommend her as a long-time crypto journalist who knows her subject and where the bodies are buried, and cite her NFT scheme piece.
"Withdrawals" could also mean "swaps", e.g.,
From the article:
"Like other stablecoins, its value depends on a simple notion: Investors expect that Tether the company will swap $1 for one tether, or one tether for $1. Central to that is the assertion that Tether has enough reserves to redeem all the roughly 68 billion tethers in existence."
Or "withdrawal" could mean "exchanage", e.g.,
"3. Putting your savings in Tether
Tether is usually worth $1, and you can earn far more interest lending it than you would with the best high-yield savings accounts. Based on that, doesn't it make sense to put your savings in Tether instead of the bank?
Not quite. While they may seem safe, Tether and other stablecoins are a much riskier place for your money than a bank account.
Tether makes no legal guarantee that 1 Tether can be exchanged for $1. Most banks offer FDIC insurance that protects up to $250,000 per account in the event of a bank failure. Tether isn't FDIC-insured, so if the company behind it fails, you'd have no protection.
There have also been controversies with Tether and its reserves in the past. Tether Limited used to claim that every Tether was backed by a U.S. dollar, but that turned out to be false. In a recent reserves breakdown, Tether Limited revealed that 2.9% of Tether was backed by cash.
https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/cryptocurrency/articles/the-5-biggest-mistakes-you-can-make-when-buying-tether/
Also "withdrawals" could mean withdrawals by the Tether…
> He's definitely the most prolific 3D artist, ever.
That is either false, or it's true in a way that is meaningless.
There are artists who have spent every day creating art. Daily art exercises and sketchbooks are commonplace. Some work in 3D, some have been working far longer than Beeple has.
If you mean "Beeple has been publishing a discrete piece of art, publicly, every day for longer than others", then I dunno, maybe? I'm not sure why that's anything to be proud of, or why anyone would aim to do that, but it might be true.
If you mean "he's created more pieces of 3D art than anyone else", then no, he's outstripped by literally thousands if not tens of thousands of people. The "winner" is probably some unknown previz animator working in an outsourced animation studio in India or China somewhere. :)
...of course, you might say "that doesn't count, I don't CARE about the stuff those guys do. Well, maybe I don't care about the stuff Beeple does.
> It's not a coincidence that he, of all people, managed to sell 69 million dollars worth of cookie-cutter crap.
It very likely isn't a coincidence. https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-the-mystery-beeple-art-buyer-and-his-nft-defi-scheme/
> most of them are busy creating escapist stuff that will never get the attention of the art scene. To that end, skill just doesn't matter.
And I don't think the art scene thinks very much of Beeple, so I'm not sure what that proves.
Since this article was written, the story of Tether has gotten way crazier — to the tune of over 50 Billion “USDT” tokens (unredeemable digital IOUs) created during the past few months.
To put this in perspective, the total Tether market cap at the end of 2019 was $4B. [0]. That’s more than 50 Billion dollars that have flooded the crypto ecosystem since the writing of this article, with no transparency about their backing or the claimed origin of the money.
And all of this cash is supposedly stored in a small bank in the Bahamas (Deltec) and backed by other “corporate paper,” with absolutely no accounting transparency nor audits. Insane!!!
I highly recommend Amy Castor’s investigative journalism on Tether [1].
Hardcore Bitcoiners love to complain about the Fed printing money, and I do too. But Tether is a few hundred orders of magnitude worse.
[0]: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/ (select “Market Cap” to see the recent parabolic curve).
[1]: https://amycastor.com/tag/tether/
Not necessarily. It's true if the person making the decision is getting paid directly from the mining. But perverse incentives abound in the cryptocurrency space. For example, consider Celsius:
https://amycastor.com/2022/09/11/crypto-collapse-celsius-voyager-skybridge-the-liabilities-are-real-the-assets-are-fake/
https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2022/08/11/crypto-collapse-coinbases-billion-dollar-bloodbath-hodlnaut-goes-down-celsius-voyager-3ac/
As they thrash around in bankruptcy, they have proposed that they will mine their way out of the hole. Will this work? I doubt it. But will it let the CEO stay in charge for a while longer, taking in more investor money and continuing to get paid? Possibly! So actual economic efficiency may not matter.
Anyone who's been paying attention knows that Tether is an opaque money-laundering scam, and it's only a matter of time before it totally unravels. The only reason Tether is making noises about cooperating with the US government is because they're being told in no uncertain terms that their continued near-term existence depends on it. Check back in a year.
[1] https://amycastor.com/2023/12/28/crypto-collapse-mt-gox-payouts-tether-hooks-up-the-feds-sec-says-no-to-coinbase-crypto-media-mergers/
[2] https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2023/12/06/bitcoin-goes-up-can-5-billion-unbacked-tethers-kickstart-a-fresh-crypto-bubble/
Crypto critics:
https://amycastor.com/blog/
https://davidgerard.co.uk
https://schiffradio.com/
Warren Buffet
They are not necessarily predicting the collapse of bitcoin but they are against crypto for many reasons.
Something to think about - bitcoin only wins if it becomes a reserve currency. Until then it’s a negative sum game measured in dollars. Because it’s people swapping in and out dollars but with the expense of mining thrown in which has to be paid in dollars.
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People that are critical of bitcoin but pro crypto? … not sure that would be interesting.