Entries related to Tether

March 15, 2024

Someone accidentally burns $1.36 million Tether

Someone accidentally threw away $1.36 million when they accidentally sent Tethers to the Tether contract address — making them permanently inaccessible in a process known as "burning". This is a rather common phenomenon in crypto, where it's easy to accidentally copy/paste the wrong address.

Most experienced crypto users have adopted the habit of sending small test transactions before transferring large amounts of tokens, to first check that they're using the correct address. Oddly, this person did so in this case, but then went right ahead and transferred the remaining tokens to the erroneous address.

The person may have lucked out that they were using a centralized stablecoin like Tether, whose operators hold a substantial amount of control over freezing, destroying, and creating new Tethers — and could feasibly replace the burned tokens.

Tweet thread by Charles Wang [archive]
Telegram post by zachxbt

February 25, 2024

Myanmar-based romance scam operation pulls in $100 million in less than two years

A pig-butchering operation in Myanmar has scammed victims of more than $100 million in Tether in less than two years, according to a report from Chainalysis and the anti-human trafficking organization International Justice Mission.

Many of the workers for the romance scam group are themselves victims of human trafficking. The operation is based in a "compound" near Myanmar's border with Thailand, and researchers estimate that thousands of trafficked workers operate the scam from the "self-contained city".

The scam may put more pressure on Tether, whose role in human trafficking and high-volume romance scam operations has been scrutinized more heavily in recent months and years. Tether has frozen some assets belonging to romance scammers in the past, but remains the token of choice for many of these groups.

"$100mn in crypto payments traced to Myanmar-based 'scammers'", Financial Times [archive]

December 25, 2023

Tether mints itself a $1 billion Christmas present

(attribution)

I wish I could give myself a billion dollars for Christmas, too.

On December 25, Tether minted 1 billion of its USDT dollar-pegged stablecoin. CEO Paolo Ardoino announced on Twitter that the mint was an "authorized but not issued transaction, meaning that this amount will be used as inventory for next period issuance requests and chain swaps". This seems to be a recent trend for Tether, as similar language was used for a $1 billion mint in September.

The activity has raised more questions around where the real money backing Tether is coming from, and if it even exists at all. Some have argued that these recent Tether mints are being used to artificially inflate the price of Bitcoin, which has been on an upward trend since mid-October.

Tether, which boasts a market cap of more than $90 billion, has never been audited, and has lied about its backing in the past.

"Tether mints $1B USDT for ‘inventory replenish’ — CEO Paolo Ardoino", Cointelegraph [archive]

November 20, 2023

DOJ cracks down on $225 million crypto romance scam

(attribution)

At least according to the rather shady Tether stablecoin provider, the U.S. Department of Justice has been working on an investigation into a massive "pig butchering" romance scam and human trafficking operation based out of Southeast Asia.

According to Tether, they "voluntarily fr[oze] approximately 225 million in USDT tokens" in connection to the investigation.

Some romance scammers hoping to lure victims into sending them cryptocurrencies are themselves victims of human trafficking operations, where they are held victim and forced to send such messages.

"Following Investigations by Tether, OKX, and the U.S. Department of Justice, Tether Voluntarily Freezes 225M in Stolen USDT Linked to International Crime Syndicate", Tether [archive]

August 1, 2023

Phisher briefly snags $20 million before it's frozen by Tether

(attribution)

A zero-transfer attack, also called an address poisoning attack, occurs when a phisher creates a blockchain address very similar to that of a target victim's wallet, and sends zero-value token transactions to the victim's addresses from the phishing wallet in hopes that the victim will later mistake the phishing address for the real one and send funds to it. It sounds unlikely to work, but users often fail to verify every character of the destination address they're using, opting instead to copy it from their transaction histories, and this can profit scammers substantially.

Someone intending to transfer Tether stablecoins amounting to $20 million apparently didn't think it was important to double-check the address, and fell for such an attack.

However, only 51 minutes after the theft, the victim had managed to get Tether to add the thief's address to its blacklist, freezing the assets and thwarting the attack. The rapidity of the freeze led various people to question who the victim might be who could get Tether to intervene so quickly.

"Tether Freezes $20 Million Linked To Phishing Scammer", CryptoPotato

March 3, 2023

WSJ alleges Tether, Bitfinex, and related companies used falsified documents to obtain banking

(attribution)

A report from the Wall Street Journal made serious allegations against the stablecoin operator Tether, sister company Bitfinex, and the web of companies behind it. According to journalists, companies behind Tether "turned to shadowy intermediaries, falsified documents and shell companies to get back in" to the global banking system in late 2018, after a series of governmental actions cut them and their banking partners off from the financial system.

Among other allegations, the WSJ outlined how Tether was repeatedly denied accounts at New York's Signature Bank, and so ultimately got an executive at an aviation fuel broker called AML Global to open an account that appeared to be used to fraudulently process transactions on behalf of Tether and Bitfinex.

Tether is the largest stablecoin in circulation, though its entire existence has been marred by questions around its legitimacy and the status of its claimed reserves.

"Crypto Companies Behind Tether Used Falsified Documents and Shell Companies to Get Bank Accounts", Wall Street Journal

May 12, 2022

Tether loses peg, drops below $0.95

Price chart of Tether to USD, showing a gradual decline below $0.99, then a dramatic dip to $0.95, before recovering to around $0.98 and then a more gradual recovery

Tether/USD on May 11–12 (attribution)

Tether, the largest stablecoin, had a major wobble. Pegged to the U.S. dollar and widely used throughout the cryptocurrency ecosystem, even a fractional cent deviation from its peg can have enormous ramifications. Tether spent six hours below $0.99 — at one point slipping down to $0.95 — in the most significant deviation from its peg in recent history. The dip was widely connected to the recent and even more dramatic de-peg of the previously third-largest stablecoin, TerraUSD, as well as the general crypto market crash.

Tether began to recover somewhat as the day progressed, gradually returning to above $0.99. However, the de-peg has clearly shaken the cryptocurrency ecosystem. The heavy reliance on Tether means that a substantial or protracted loss of its peg would be devastating, and the open secret that Tether does not have the backing assets it once claimed has intensified fears about a possible run on Tether.

"Crypto meltdown deepens as stablecoin Tether drops below dollar peg", Reuters

March 11, 2022

$4 billion hedge fund Fir Tree Capital Management shorts Tether

(attribution)

The large hedge fund Fir Tree Capital Management has decided that the doubts around the stablecoin Tether are serious enough to take out a substantial short position against the project. Tether has faced questions from regulators, many of which center around whether or not the stablecoin is actually backed by the reserves it claims to have. Some of the assets Tether holds are high-yield commercial paper, which Fir Tree evidently believes is substantially tied to Chinese real estate firms. If that is the case, the real estate crisis in China (primarily revolving around Evergrande Group) could cause the value of Tether's reserves to plummet. According to Fir Tree, they've been shorting Tether since July, and expect their bet could pay off within a year. Other commenters and analysts have speculated that if Tether collapses, and that it very well might, there could be enormous ramifications for the rest of the cryptocurrency space.

"Hedge Fund Fir Tree Bets Big With Short of Stablecoin Tether", Bloomberg
"A $4 Billion Hedge Fund Is Shorting Tether's Stablecoin", Decrypt

January 1, 2022

Tether, the stablecoin that claims to be fully backed by actual currency, adds $1 billion to their supply

(attribution)

Shortly after midnight on January 1, Tether added another $1 billion to its total supply. Although Tether claims that all of its supply is fully backed by actual currency, many (including legislators) have cast doubt on the veracity of this claim. Large additions to their supply such as this one, which have become quite a regular occurrence for Tether, raise further eyebrows, with commenters online speaking of them "printing" money. Some speculated that this recent move was an attempt to pump the value of Bitcoin, which had declined over the month of December — starting the month at about $57,000 and ending it about $10,000 lower.

Tweet by usdcoinprinter

December 4, 2021

Tether mints $3 billion in two weeks

(attribution)

Tether minted more than $3 billion in a two week span. This brings the total amount of USDT (which is pegged to the U.S. dollar) to 76 billion, and much of it was minted this year. If Tether actually had reserves to back this up, as they claim, they would be one of the largest banks. However, as the Financial Times reported, in March 2021 "the stablecoin that used to say it was 100 per cent backed by cash reserves is in fact... 2.9 per cent backed by cash reserves".

"Tether says its reserves are backed by cash to the tune of . . . 2.9%", Financial Times
"Tether Mints Three Billion USDT in Past Two Weeks"BeInCrypto
"Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?", Bloomberg

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