Is Bitcoin's recent bull run part of an exit scam by Tether?
Updated
Introduction
Financial Twitter is buzzing about an article on the "Crypto Anonymous" blog which alleges that Bitcoin's recent 4x price increase is part of an "exit scam" by the folks at Tether, Ltd. (An "exit scam" is when a company that knows it's about to go bust quickly extracts as much money from its customers as it can.) Here's a link to the Crypto Anonymous piece:
crypto-anonymous-2021.medium.com/the-bit-short-inside-cryptos-doomsday-machine-f8dcf78a64d3
The Allegations
The highlights from the article are as follows:
1) 70% of Bitcoin's inflow is denominated in Tether coins. The Tether inflow comes through exchanges like Binance, Bit-Z, and HitBTC that have not met the regulatory requirements to get direct access to the US banking system. It seems that users on these exchanges are trading their state-backed currencies for Tether coins and then trading their Tether coins for Bitcoins.
2) People apparently use these unregulated exchanges rather than a more respectable platform like Coinbase for two reasons. First, the unregulated exchanges allow users to trade with up to 100x leverage. (That's an insane amount of leverage.) And second, they do a lot of promotions where they give away free Tether coins in exchange for users completing "timed missions" like inviting friends onto the exchanges.
3) Tether Ltd. is currently under investigation by the Office of the Attorney General for the Southern District of New York. Every Tether coin is supposed to be backed by a US dollar. But for various reasons, journalists and regulators suspect that Tether may not actually have the amount of reserve currency they say they do. Tether refuses to submit to a third-party audit, which is a huge red flag. The Crypto Anonymous post argues that "Tether Ltd.’s bank is Deltec bank in the Bahamas, and the Bahamas discloses how much foreign currency its domestic banks hold each month. The answer was — at least up to the end of September 2020 — not nearly enough. . . . The implication was shocking: there weren’t nearly enough dollars in all the domestic banks in the Bahamas to back the Tethers that were floating around in the crypto market."
4) After the NY AG announced its court filing against Tether, the company accelerated the creation of new blocks of Tether coins. The Crypto Anonymous post suggests that Tether execs see the writing on the wall with the pending case against them in New York, so they are quickly creating as many unbacked Tether coins as possible, using them to manipulate the price of Bitcoin through unregulated exchanges, and then walking away with US dollars.
Assessing the Allegations
Regarding point number 3, David Fauchier of Nickel Digital argues that the fact that there aren't enough US dollars in all of the Bahamas to back the existing Tether coins is not conclusive, because Deltec isn't Tether's only bank and could also have deposit accounts outside the Bahamas. (Find Fauchier's full rebuttal on Twitter: twitter.com/dfauchier/status/1350741870868111360.) However, even Fauchier admits there is no good-faith reason for Tether to refuse to submit to a third-party audit. This is classic behavior for a company engaged in fraud.
On point number 4, the post gets into some sketchy territory. Crypto Anonymous points out that the new blocks of Tether coins are being created in suspiciously round numbers, but Fauchier argues that that's because of the nature of Tether's coin creation process. Rather than create new Tether coins at the moment a user submits a creation request, Tether creates blocks of them in advance and then uses these blocks to fulfill creation requests. Fauchier also points out that the acceleration in new coin creation is exactly what we'd expect to see in a Bitcoin bull market. If users are primarily buying Bitcoin with Tether, then increased demand for Bitcoin means increased demand for Tether.
CryptoAnonymous also probably over-emphasizes promotions that give Tether coins away in exchange for user referrals. He argues that respectable exchanges like Coinbase don't run these types of promotions, which suggests that the payoff isn't actually worth it from a business standpoint. Coinbase may not run such promotions, but lots of stock brokers like Robinhood and Webull do. These sorts of promotions aren't evidence that Tether coins are being created out of thin air. And while such promotions might help attract users to the unregulated exchanges, they aren't big enough to move the needle on Bitcoin's price.
What could affect Bitcoin's price is if, as CryptoAnonymous suggests, Tether, Ltd. is either directly buying Bitcoin with newly created Tether coins ("almost certainly through a deniable proxy trading account") or is creating large amounts of unbacked Tether coins to provide users on the unregulated exchanges with massive amounts of Tether-denominated leverage. One or both of those things may be the case, although CryptoAnonymous doesn't offer any conclusive proof.
The Takeaway
To summarize, I am not fully convinced by CryptoAnonymous's allegation that Bitcoin's recent 4x price increase is the result of an exit scam by Tether. There's certainly smoke here, however, and the fact that 70% of Bitcoin's inflows are denominated in Tether is alarming given the open criminal case against Bitfinex and Tether, Ltd. If Tether were to be shut down for fraud, many of those flows might go away. And the apparently large amounts of leverage in the market are also concerning, because any external shock (such as a criminal finding against Tether) could result in margin calls and forced selling. That's how market crashes happen.
In conclusion, Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrency) traders may want to be careful in light of these revelations. It's easy to lose your shirt if you've got too much of your money in a single asset class. Personally, I like to be well-diversified into a wide range of asset classes such as stocks, bonds, metals, real estate, and cash. Do your own due diligence; this is not investment advice.
Financial Twitter is buzzing about an article on the "Crypto Anonymous" blog which alleges that Bitcoin's recent 4x price increase is part of an "exit scam" by the folks at Tether, Ltd. (An "exit scam" is when a company that knows it's about to go bust quickly extracts as much money from its customers as it can.) Here's a link to the Crypto Anonymous piece:
crypto-anonymous-2021.medium.com/the-bit-short-inside-cryptos-doomsday-machine-f8dcf78a64d3
The Allegations
The highlights from the article are as follows:
1) 70% of Bitcoin's inflow is denominated in Tether coins. The Tether inflow comes through exchanges like Binance, Bit-Z, and HitBTC that have not met the regulatory requirements to get direct access to the US banking system. It seems that users on these exchanges are trading their state-backed currencies for Tether coins and then trading their Tether coins for Bitcoins.
2) People apparently use these unregulated exchanges rather than a more respectable platform like Coinbase for two reasons. First, the unregulated exchanges allow users to trade with up to 100x leverage. (That's an insane amount of leverage.) And second, they do a lot of promotions where they give away free Tether coins in exchange for users completing "timed missions" like inviting friends onto the exchanges.
3) Tether Ltd. is currently under investigation by the Office of the Attorney General for the Southern District of New York. Every Tether coin is supposed to be backed by a US dollar. But for various reasons, journalists and regulators suspect that Tether may not actually have the amount of reserve currency they say they do. Tether refuses to submit to a third-party audit, which is a huge red flag. The Crypto Anonymous post argues that "Tether Ltd.’s bank is Deltec bank in the Bahamas, and the Bahamas discloses how much foreign currency its domestic banks hold each month. The answer was — at least up to the end of September 2020 — not nearly enough. . . . The implication was shocking: there weren’t nearly enough dollars in all the domestic banks in the Bahamas to back the Tethers that were floating around in the crypto market."
4) After the NY AG announced its court filing against Tether, the company accelerated the creation of new blocks of Tether coins. The Crypto Anonymous post suggests that Tether execs see the writing on the wall with the pending case against them in New York, so they are quickly creating as many unbacked Tether coins as possible, using them to manipulate the price of Bitcoin through unregulated exchanges, and then walking away with US dollars.
Assessing the Allegations
Regarding point number 3, David Fauchier of Nickel Digital argues that the fact that there aren't enough US dollars in all of the Bahamas to back the existing Tether coins is not conclusive, because Deltec isn't Tether's only bank and could also have deposit accounts outside the Bahamas. (Find Fauchier's full rebuttal on Twitter: twitter.com/dfauchier/status/1350741870868111360.) However, even Fauchier admits there is no good-faith reason for Tether to refuse to submit to a third-party audit. This is classic behavior for a company engaged in fraud.
On point number 4, the post gets into some sketchy territory. Crypto Anonymous points out that the new blocks of Tether coins are being created in suspiciously round numbers, but Fauchier argues that that's because of the nature of Tether's coin creation process. Rather than create new Tether coins at the moment a user submits a creation request, Tether creates blocks of them in advance and then uses these blocks to fulfill creation requests. Fauchier also points out that the acceleration in new coin creation is exactly what we'd expect to see in a Bitcoin bull market. If users are primarily buying Bitcoin with Tether, then increased demand for Bitcoin means increased demand for Tether.
CryptoAnonymous also probably over-emphasizes promotions that give Tether coins away in exchange for user referrals. He argues that respectable exchanges like Coinbase don't run these types of promotions, which suggests that the payoff isn't actually worth it from a business standpoint. Coinbase may not run such promotions, but lots of stock brokers like Robinhood and Webull do. These sorts of promotions aren't evidence that Tether coins are being created out of thin air. And while such promotions might help attract users to the unregulated exchanges, they aren't big enough to move the needle on Bitcoin's price.
What could affect Bitcoin's price is if, as CryptoAnonymous suggests, Tether, Ltd. is either directly buying Bitcoin with newly created Tether coins ("almost certainly through a deniable proxy trading account") or is creating large amounts of unbacked Tether coins to provide users on the unregulated exchanges with massive amounts of Tether-denominated leverage. One or both of those things may be the case, although CryptoAnonymous doesn't offer any conclusive proof.
The Takeaway
To summarize, I am not fully convinced by CryptoAnonymous's allegation that Bitcoin's recent 4x price increase is the result of an exit scam by Tether. There's certainly smoke here, however, and the fact that 70% of Bitcoin's inflows are denominated in Tether is alarming given the open criminal case against Bitfinex and Tether, Ltd. If Tether were to be shut down for fraud, many of those flows might go away. And the apparently large amounts of leverage in the market are also concerning, because any external shock (such as a criminal finding against Tether) could result in margin calls and forced selling. That's how market crashes happen.
In conclusion, Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrency) traders may want to be careful in light of these revelations. It's easy to lose your shirt if you've got too much of your money in a single asset class. Personally, I like to be well-diversified into a wide range of asset classes such as stocks, bonds, metals, real estate, and cash. Do your own due diligence; this is not investment advice.
Note
There are new developments with regard to Tether, as laid out in the following Twitter thread:twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1393669812220465162
Apparently, Tether disclosed Wednesday that it has enough cash to redeem only 3% of outstanding Tether tokens. The rest of the tokens are backed by commercial paper (kind of like a really short-term corporate bond) from undisclosed counterparties. That means that, in the best case scenario, 97% of Tether coins are exposed to credit risk. (I.e. if the counterparties default, these Tether coins are worthless.) In the worst case scenario, the commercial paper is an accounting gimmick and isn't actually any good.
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