Howard Lutnick manages a huge pile of money for Tether, a sketchy offshore company whose name appears frequently in criminal indictments. He also just became co-chair of the Trump transition team.
Nice post, Michel. I'm what you refer to as a "tether truther" - I believe that the vast majority of Tether is simply printed out of thin air and unbacked, and it has never passed an audit. It has among the largest psuedo-cash reserves in the world yet has something like fifteen employees, many of whom are admitted fraudsters. Why hasn't tether been taken down given the flimsiness and obviousness of the scam? Because it has what is referred to as a "krisha" - i.e. institutional protection from the NSA and/or CIA. The primary goal of Tether and the crypto space is to publicly test blockchains for upcoming CBDCs, which will be used to enslave humanity to an extent never seen before in human history, with secondary/tertiary goals of funding black operations and enriching themselves. It has been wildly successful for these purposes. If tether was taken down (and I'm not saying it will be, just that our elites have the power to do it if they so choose) I would expect to see a 99%+ decrease in the value of crypto instantaneously, because tether is traded more on a daily basis than the top 10 coins *combined*. For more please see here: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/misconceptions-regarding-viewing
i agree with all of that except the "printed out of thin air" part. i suspect that the money at least exists, though it could very well be borrowed or otherwise encumbered (especially the more than 50% of tether that lives on the tron blockchain, which is where the real fuckery is).
whatever of it exists is almost certainly "dirty" though - maybe mostly capital exfiltrated from china mixed in with a ton of russian sanctions evasion, fentanyl, pig butchering, etc. etc.
Why do you think that the money exists if Tether has never passed an audit? The last time I recall they admitted that most of their funds were not actually cash but held in “commercial paper”, while commercial paper traders - which is a very small community - had never heard of them, lol.
BTW FTX was the vehicle for the capital exfiltration. i have a tweet that explains this but i just got locked out of my twitter account :(
but tl;dr FTX was mostly a vehicle for money laundering by chinese mafia to get money out of china, for which chinese citizens are willing to pay as much as 30%.
$40 billion worth of the Tether in the world (and 100% of it on the sketchy chinese blockchain as of the time of collapse) came through FTX.
that is true w/r/t the commercial paper though the details of that came out last year and while there were some very sus aspects it was also pretty convincing that most of it existed as of that time (when Tether was a lot smaller, closer to $10-20bn) and the majority of it was issued by the 5 biggest state owned banks in china (i've gone through all the documents, have a spreadsheet somewhere). i think most of the money backing Tether - the vast majority even - is chinese capital exfiltration.
if i were valuing it as an investment i would mark it at $0 because of the lack of an audit, but capital exfiltration is a huge business in china for the last few years.
not sure what you're getting at but there's a direct connection from 1MDB to the crypto economy through Cross River Bank, which has all the following properties:
1. Massive investments from a16z (see my other piece "Of Tech Bros And Trumpers" for more on a16z
2. $100 million investment from the Malaysian chief of police who "investigated" 1MDB
3. Most covid relief loan fraud (there's a congressional report on just this small bank, that's how bad it was)
1MDB was a conspiracy to loot Malasia’s Sovereign Wealth Fund by multiple actors, including intelligence agencies. The forfeiture complaint alleged that the conspiracy ran from approximately 2009 to 2014.
When Tether’s D-Day arrives the forfeiture procedure will capture whatever assets that can be located with the same kind of complaint used in the 1MDB conspiracy. But in addition to forfeiture, there are very severe criminal penalties for some of the conduct you describe in today’s article. In China, for example some of the crimes you describe carry the death penalty. Any important public official who got greedy could easily be blackmailed by an intelligence agency with the kind of evidence in Tether's possession. That’s the trap.
the chinese government has actually gotten somewhat serious very recently about cracking down on all kinds of Tether related crime both within china as well as in many southeast asian countries like cambodia, myanmar, vietnam, thailand, etc.
What if a small group that hopes to use CBDC’S to enslave humanity trapped leaders of the world’s superpowers in either a Tether Trap or something similar? Do you think the small group would think they caught a tiger by the tail and quit? Or do you think they would grab the opportunity to cram CBDC’s down our throats?
Nice post, Michel. I'm what you refer to as a "tether truther" - I believe that the vast majority of Tether is simply printed out of thin air and unbacked, and it has never passed an audit. It has among the largest psuedo-cash reserves in the world yet has something like fifteen employees, many of whom are admitted fraudsters. Why hasn't tether been taken down given the flimsiness and obviousness of the scam? Because it has what is referred to as a "krisha" - i.e. institutional protection from the NSA and/or CIA. The primary goal of Tether and the crypto space is to publicly test blockchains for upcoming CBDCs, which will be used to enslave humanity to an extent never seen before in human history, with secondary/tertiary goals of funding black operations and enriching themselves. It has been wildly successful for these purposes. If tether was taken down (and I'm not saying it will be, just that our elites have the power to do it if they so choose) I would expect to see a 99%+ decrease in the value of crypto instantaneously, because tether is traded more on a daily basis than the top 10 coins *combined*. For more please see here: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/misconceptions-regarding-viewing
i agree with all of that except the "printed out of thin air" part. i suspect that the money at least exists, though it could very well be borrowed or otherwise encumbered (especially the more than 50% of tether that lives on the tron blockchain, which is where the real fuckery is).
whatever of it exists is almost certainly "dirty" though - maybe mostly capital exfiltrated from china mixed in with a ton of russian sanctions evasion, fentanyl, pig butchering, etc. etc.
Why do you think that the money exists if Tether has never passed an audit? The last time I recall they admitted that most of their funds were not actually cash but held in “commercial paper”, while commercial paper traders - which is a very small community - had never heard of them, lol.
BTW FTX was the vehicle for the capital exfiltration. i have a tweet that explains this but i just got locked out of my twitter account :(
but tl;dr FTX was mostly a vehicle for money laundering by chinese mafia to get money out of china, for which chinese citizens are willing to pay as much as 30%.
$40 billion worth of the Tether in the world (and 100% of it on the sketchy chinese blockchain as of the time of collapse) came through FTX.
that is true w/r/t the commercial paper though the details of that came out last year and while there were some very sus aspects it was also pretty convincing that most of it existed as of that time (when Tether was a lot smaller, closer to $10-20bn) and the majority of it was issued by the 5 biggest state owned banks in china (i've gone through all the documents, have a spreadsheet somewhere). i think most of the money backing Tether - the vast majority even - is chinese capital exfiltration.
if i were valuing it as an investment i would mark it at $0 because of the lack of an audit, but capital exfiltration is a huge business in china for the last few years.
Thank you for exposing this very elaborate trap. Here's how the trap is going to work:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1134381/dl
not sure what you're getting at but there's a direct connection from 1MDB to the crypto economy through Cross River Bank, which has all the following properties:
1. Massive investments from a16z (see my other piece "Of Tech Bros And Trumpers" for more on a16z
2. $100 million investment from the Malaysian chief of police who "investigated" 1MDB
3. Most covid relief loan fraud (there's a congressional report on just this small bank, that's how bad it was)
4. Coinbase's transactional banking partner
1MDB was a conspiracy to loot Malasia’s Sovereign Wealth Fund by multiple actors, including intelligence agencies. The forfeiture complaint alleged that the conspiracy ran from approximately 2009 to 2014.
When Tether’s D-Day arrives the forfeiture procedure will capture whatever assets that can be located with the same kind of complaint used in the 1MDB conspiracy. But in addition to forfeiture, there are very severe criminal penalties for some of the conduct you describe in today’s article. In China, for example some of the crimes you describe carry the death penalty. Any important public official who got greedy could easily be blackmailed by an intelligence agency with the kind of evidence in Tether's possession. That’s the trap.
the chinese government has actually gotten somewhat serious very recently about cracking down on all kinds of Tether related crime both within china as well as in many southeast asian countries like cambodia, myanmar, vietnam, thailand, etc.
What if a small group that hopes to use CBDC’S to enslave humanity trapped leaders of the world’s superpowers in either a Tether Trap or something similar? Do you think the small group would think they caught a tiger by the tail and quit? Or do you think they would grab the opportunity to cram CBDC’s down our throats?