Coffeezilla
7 HN recommenders · recommended in 7 months, 2021–2025
35:53 · 4.6M views · Jun 15, 2021
Coffeezilla gives a comprehensive history of Tether, the stablecoin issued by a company controlled by the owners of Bitfinex. He lays out accusations that it is not fully backed.
HN commenters recommend it as the best single, entertaining overview of Tether's dubious history, and cite it when arguing Tether lacks real USD backing.
15 comments from Hacker News
A YouTuber called Coffeezilla had an entertaining video yesterday that I think is one of the most comprehensive (and entertaining) takes on this. It's pretty damning when you look at all the evidence together. this video Even in the off-chance that people with a track record of lying about being backed have suddenly gone legitimate, it's a pretty big indictment of the system that it could grow to the size it did while looking incredibly like a scam .
> I don’t hold any tether, and I wouldn’t recommend it to others. But the common opinion that Tether is insolvent might be wrong. Tether, as a stable business, is a money printing machine. I’m not sure it’d be worth risking the business and jail time to pump shitcoins I encourage you to watch Coffeezilla's video about Tether. There's lots of shady stuff going on behind the scenes, like them borrowing $383M from Bitfinex and showing that to an auditor to prove they were solvent (~20:00). this video
Saw a really good YT video[1] on Tether yesterday. Breaks down all the sketchiness. But the problem he mentions in the video is a problem with pretty much all stablecoins, in order to function you must have the proper reserves before generating a token, but inevatably greed kicks in and you start thinking what if you minted coins without the backing. USD pegged stablecoins are basically money printing machines in the hands of whoever runs the project. [1]: this video
Bullshit. The biggest stable coin, Tether, is pure scam. They are essentially creating money out of nowhere. They were found guilty of massive fraud and were fined $18M [1]. They refuse to get audited by a third-party [2]. The ones that do audit them are just as sketchy as them [3]. I would recommend watching this video to grasp the scope of their fraud [4] [1] - [LINK] [2] - [LINK] [3] - [LINK] [4] - this video
What I don't understand is why major exchanges continue to give tether their customers money when it's not backed by cash? Would an exchange not be incentivised to manage the cash themselves and significantly reduce risk for their customers and business? It seems like huge risk for what looks like a minor convenience. Also, very good video on the history and current state of tether: this video