> The fact that there is so much money, SO much money, being thrown around a technology that is dodgy at best, and a scam at worst, is terrifying.
We have very little evidence to substantiate the actual quantity of real dollars in this system.
The NYAG settlement with Tether shows that it's backed by bailing wire, chewing gum and hope [1]. USDC has stopped publishing their attestations as of January (which, btw, - and I can't believe I'm going to cite Tether's Saul Goodman but - aren't audits [2]) and since then it's market cap has doubled. USDT and USDC both use similar weasel wording about the nature of what backs them.
An attempted ETF a couple of years ago admitted 95% of all trading volume in the crypto space was fake. [3]
The CFTC smacked Coinbase because literally 99% of all Litecoin trading volume in 2017 was one dude, Charlie Lee - the LTC founder, wash trading internally [4]. Lee then took advantage of the market cap he synthesized, dumped literally all his holdings at the peak and sailed off to an island.
This is just a couple of examples off the top of my head. It's all fraudulent.
[1] https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2021.02.17_-_settlemen...
[2] https://twitter.com/bitcoinlawyer/status/1386146486359150597
[3] https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitwise-calls-out-to-sec-95-o...
[4] https://cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8369-21
We have very little evidence to substantiate the actual quantity of real dollars in this system.
The NYAG settlement with Tether shows that it's backed by bailing wire, chewing gum and hope [1]. USDC has stopped publishing their attestations as of January (which, btw, - and I can't believe I'm going to cite Tether's Saul Goodman but - aren't audits [2]) and since then it's market cap has doubled. USDT and USDC both use similar weasel wording about the nature of what backs them.
An attempted ETF a couple of years ago admitted 95% of all trading volume in the crypto space was fake. [3]
The CFTC smacked Coinbase because literally 99% of all Litecoin trading volume in 2017 was one dude, Charlie Lee - the LTC founder, wash trading internally [4]. Lee then took advantage of the market cap he synthesized, dumped literally all his holdings at the peak and sailed off to an island.
This is just a couple of examples off the top of my head. It's all fraudulent.
[1] https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2021.02.17_-_settlemen...
[2] https://twitter.com/bitcoinlawyer/status/1386146486359150597
[3] https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitwise-calls-out-to-sec-95-o...
[4] https://cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8369-21