RE: Why Tether’s latest statement about its auditor is complete BS
@ebargains I would make a presumption, that Tether was printed at a higher rate since October 2017 because a lot of exchanges asked for it, and in return gave huge sums of money. So nothing special and problematic about that.
Second thing, banks have an obligation to keep only 10% of funds as reserve, so other 90% can "float" around the world. And this is not a problem, unless all the people will want to cash out at the same time. So same things have to apply to Tether as well, and also – they have more than 10% of $2 billions in bank accounts.
Third thing, @espano don't you think, that Tether have audit problems just because nobody want's to audit them? The process is not super hard, I agree. But you still need a big comoany to do that, and large audit companies do not want to risk their reputation. Because if they do the audit, and put signature, that everything is okay, but eventually turns out to be the opposite – not only Tether will lose trust, but the audit company will lose trus as well and possibly will go out of business. After all, it's $2 billions have to be audited. And that's a lot of money! That's why, nobody want's to work with Tether or have weak ties. All crypto market now is unregulated and there's are a lot of holes and dark corners.
@karolynaz Your point about audit companies shying away from crypto businesses is very relevant at this point in time. Apparently Grant Thornton, one of the largest auditors in the world, audited Bitconnect before it went up in smoke. Not sure what their report stated though.
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There is no way you can make such a mistake at audit that you will destroy your credibility that much as an audit company. As explained in the above article, auditing cash flows is the simplest thing to do.
My opinion is that if they are rotten let them crumble and call them out. The crypto community needs to self correct. It can do it and that will give it credibility in the mainstream.
$2 billions. And that's a lot of money!
Sounds like you have no idea what is involved in an audit. Apple has over $100 Billion to audit. Trust me it didn't have to hire 50X as many auditors.
As a clue - the auditors don't count $1 bills, manually, one bill at a time.
Auditors are in the business of performing work commensurate to the perceived level of risk. Before even accepting a client, they'll do their due diligence to make sure they're not dealing with scammers/criminals... for all we know, Tether didn't even pass the client acceptance procedures.
Assuming they did, you wouldn't necessarily need a big company to do the audit. However, any auditor worth their salt would see Tether as a risky business and perform more procedures accordingly. That's how they get comfort over putting their name on the audit report.
The more I think about it, it seems likely that Tether has some or most of the funds somewhere -whether it belongs to them or is fully accessible is another story.
Another potential reason for losing their auditor is a question of liabilities. Tether claims that they have no legal obligation to redeem Tether for USD.... therefore, an auditor would disagree wholeheartedly with how they have classified all outstanding tokens as liabilities on their balance sheet (https://wallet.tether.to/transparency). It's possible that Friedman LLP told them that they couldn't record this as a liability unless they planned to redeem the tokens.. which Tether wouldn't want to do, as the redeemed tokens would then have to be treated as income to them!
All in all... it's a unnecessary mess. If Tether was legit, they could easily prove it.
That's part of the issue I think. Crypto being unregulated, there isn't any specific amount that has to be held in cash. I think if I were Tether, I would be erring on the side of caution in my holdings. They are poised to be the peg for USD for long term. There's big money in that. If they tried to make money in the short term by risking backing funds in investments or by inflating beyond their holdings, they may have blown a huge opportunity.
I think when the dust settles, it will be clear that you need more than 10% in backing holdings. Crypto is volatile, and full of super low-fee day trading. I think that justifies having a peg with a more conservative backing strategy.
Appreciated reading your thoughts.
I partially disagree - the fact that crypto is unregulated isn't the main issue. Even if regulations existed saying that 1:1 ratio in cash needs to be held, Tether would simply operate in a jurisdiction that doesn't require it. regulations must be enforced, and therefore, can always be skirted.
the main issue is that Tether has claimed that they will maintain a 1:1 ratio. regulations or not, they've stated publicly that they will maintain this ratio, to ensure the peg remains.
if they decided to use the cash for something else to make profits in the meantime, that's misleading and dishonest.