(Ezekiel Loseke, Headline USA) Darren Beattie, in an overview of Revolver’s investigative journalism on Tether, exposed a money-laundering operation that may be bigger than FTX and more politically significant than the cosmopolitan oligarch George Soros.
Beattie’s overview is a summary of the full report; while the summary should be heard, the full report must be read.
The original article asserted that “FTX may not even be the biggest scam in crypto.” Indeed, it argued that it was describing “another, even more spectacular scam.”
This scam centered around another cryptocurrency, Tether, which is the third largest cryptocurrency in existence.
Tether is what is called a “stable coin,” which is tied to the American dollar. This means that Tether is supposed to hold the ‘steady’ value of the American dollar.
The coin can claim to hold this value because, unlike the other Crypto coins, each Tether is supposedly backed by a US dollar or liquid value thereof. For the system to work honestly, one Tether can only be created when the company holds one dollar in reserve supporting that particular bitcoin.
Thus, an honest stable coin would produce securities that match the coins produced.
Unfortunately, according to Revolver, there is no reason to believe Tether has the backing it claims to have. It has never been audited and is “months away” from being ready for an audit, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Indeed, the minimal scrutiny that Tether has received depended upon a $382 loan from its sister company hours before the books were checked to make the numbers work, according to Revolver.
The lack of scrutiny matters because if a received dollar does not back every Tether, the coin is a perfect mechanism for money laundering. One can sell or trade a Tether for a genuine coin or USD and thus print money at no cost.
Despite this lack of transparency and accountability, half of all bitcoin trades today use Tether. Accordingly, Tether boasts a $70 Billion value.
If the lack of audits is not unsettling enough, the potentially corrupt currency was founded by Brock Pierce. Pierce is a former child actor who was arrested for child pornography, connected to Jeffrey Epstein, but then was never charged. He was released without consequence and helped create Tether.
However, despite the apparent character and transparency flaws, Tether has played a massive role in exchanges.
An anonymous crypto expert told Revolver that people ignore Tether’s problems because it is crucial to the crypto industry. He said, “crypto libertarians … [have a] Ponzi Mindset when it comes to Tether.” He continued, “In order to be congruent and confident in the future they need to believe Tether isn’t a burning bag of shit overlayed on top of a flaming diarrhetic volcano.”
Unfortunately, because of this blindness, he said, “Everything that in retrospect looks super shady and how-did-they-get-away-with-it-for-so-long for FTX is WNBA-tier compared to the 1994-Olympics Dream Team of Schemes that is Tether.”
As if that isn’t shady enough, Tether’s stability may be explained by support from the CIA. Several CIA-backed foreign entities use Tether as their crypto of choice. The CIA-backed rebels in Myanmar use Tether heavily, according to Aljazeera. Wired reported that the al-Qaeda-affiliated Sunni rebel groups of Syria also heavily rely upon Tether.
The full article also explains that “Tether is not just the cryptocurrency of choice for US-backed rebel groups. It has also become a favorite of drug cartels,” which have frequently been linked to the CIA.
So Tether is a currency that claims to be backed by the US Dollar but refuses to prove it, founded by a former child actor who has been arrested for sex crimes and is a favorite tool of exchange for CIA-backed terrorists and drug dealers. It is plausibly fraudulent but manages to hold a massive market share, despite these obvious flaws.
If Tether is corrupt or politically active, then it has the potential to be more powerful than the infamous cosmopolitan oligarch George Soros.
