Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Joe Wis and I'm Tracy Hallaway. Tracy, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the funny things, I guess I don't know
Speaker 1: if funny is the right word, but one of the
Speaker 1: funny things with crypto is that, you know, it's shocking
Speaker 1: when a big entity like f t X collapses, and
Speaker 1: there have been other collapses as well, But on some level,
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone really thinks anyone in the space
Speaker 1: is like blue chip or like completely legit, right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's no one. There's no one in crypto that you
Speaker 1: would like trust the way like say you trust, like
Speaker 1: putting your money at like JP Morgan or something. I
Speaker 1: think that's true, but everything in crypto is kind of relative.
Speaker 1: So I have previously described f t X as like
Speaker 1: the Microsoft of crypto exchanges, because it was the one
Speaker 1: that people thought was kind of best practice, and it
Speaker 1: had all these connections with traditional finance and Sam Bateman
Speaker 1: Freed was lobbying for stronger crypto regulation, and everything seemed
Speaker 1: kind of like up and up, and it had this
Speaker 1: wonderful liquidation engine that everyone talked about, and clearly clearly
Speaker 1: that wasn't the case. But you're right. There are actors
Speaker 1: in the crypto space of varying quality. Let's say, right,
Speaker 1: and you said the key word, which you nailed is relative,
Speaker 1: because sure, there are some that seemed to be kind
Speaker 1: of well run and decently well regulated, and then there
Speaker 1: are others that people have been saying, oh, this is
Speaker 1: going to collapse, this is a fraud, this is whatever
Speaker 1: for years and years, and you don't really know which
Speaker 1: one is going to go. And it turns out that
Speaker 1: a lot of the critics of crypto may you know,
Speaker 1: get things right, but on the other hand, like don't
Speaker 1: really know which which domino is going to tumble next.
Speaker 1: It's been surprisingly hard to figure that out. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: again I hesitate to use the fun but I guess
Speaker 1: that's one of the unusual things about crypto is the
Speaker 1: guys you think aren't gonna make it can persist for
Speaker 1: a lot longer that those that you think have a
Speaker 1: better chance. So you know, things like doge coin, it's
Speaker 1: still here yet, I know, like something that is clearly
Speaker 1: a joke still has a nominal monetary value. And then
Speaker 1: of course there is tether, yes, and so I think
Speaker 1: when ft x collapsed. Both of us sort of had
Speaker 1: the same thought at the same time, which she's like, Man,
Speaker 1: you know, it's funny again. I don't know funny is
Speaker 1: the right word. But Tether is still here. And people
Speaker 1: have been betting against Tether or predicting its demise, or
Speaker 1: claiming that it's a fraud, or claiming that it's going
Speaker 1: to get shut down by regulators, or claiming that it's
Speaker 1: going to lose its peg forever. Meanwhile, all of these
Speaker 1: things implode that aren't tether, and Tether as of right now,
Speaker 1: which is we're recording this on December five, is trading
Speaker 1: about one to the dollar, right, So Heather is a
Speaker 1: stable coin. One Tether is supposed to be worth one
Speaker 1: dollar at all times. It has previously dipped below that level,
Speaker 1: particularly after the big crypto blow ups in the spring
Speaker 1: of this year, when Tera Luna collapsed, and then when
Speaker 1: FTX collapsed, it slipped slightly below it's one dollar peg.
Speaker 1: But it's come back, and I think it has been
Speaker 1: remarkably resilient when you consider that. Literally for years people
Speaker 1: have been asking about this company, how it's run, the
Speaker 1: sort of web of relationships around it, and perhaps most crucially,
Speaker 1: are there actually things backing Tether, because as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: it's a collateralized stable coin. It is supposed to be
Speaker 1: backed by dollar assets, but there's always been a lot
Speaker 1: of doubt and questioning over whether or not those exist.
Speaker 1: In fact, last year, Tether and bitfin x we're ordered
Speaker 1: by the CFTC and also the New York Attorney a
Speaker 1: role to pay millions of dollars in fines for misleading customers,
Speaker 1: and Tether's own PR strategy when it comes to this,
Speaker 1: I think it's fair to say it's been a little
Speaker 1: bit weird, and I'm just thinking, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the ultimate ironies is I remember we had Sam Bankman
Speaker 1: freed On the f t X founder with Matt Levine,
Speaker 1: I think our first conversation with those two, and we
Speaker 1: asked SPF about Tether, and he basically said something along
Speaker 1: the lines of like, oh, it's just you know, it's
Speaker 1: a complete mess, Like, you know, it's kind of a
Speaker 1: mess of a process maintaining this thing. And so if
Speaker 1: SPF is telling you that this thing is messy, I
Speaker 1: think it deserves its own episode, right it does? You
Speaker 1: know SPF, f t X and el Amta, they were
Speaker 1: big Tether users he felt that. But anyway, I have
Speaker 1: so many questions about Tether, and in the wake of
Speaker 1: f t X, I thought it would be a good
Speaker 1: time to, yeah, revisit what it is, what its role is,
Speaker 1: what we know about it, what we don't know about it, etcetera,
Speaker 1: and just sort of like take stock of this pretty
Speaker 1: I think, critical piece of crypto infrastructure totally, and also
Speaker 1: why it's proven so resilient and what could actually kind
Speaker 1: of knock it down. All right, let's go. We are
Speaker 1: going to be speaking with someone who knows the company
Speaker 1: very well, has been reporting on it and talking about
Speaker 1: it and analyzing it for a long time. We're going
Speaker 1: to get all of our questions cleared up. We're gonna
Speaker 1: be speaking to Bennett Tomlin. He is the co host
Speaker 1: of the Crypto Critics Corner podcast and he's also the
Speaker 1: head of research at protost Media, and he is an
Speaker 1: encyclopedic knowledge of the crypto ecosystem and who does what
Speaker 1: and who is who. So Bennett, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for coming on odd lots glad to be here. All right,
Speaker 1: let's just start like really simple, who started Tether and why?
Speaker 1: That's a surprisingly challenge. I thought that would be an
Speaker 1: easy question to start with, Okay, Nominally, Nominally it was
Speaker 1: started in two thousand and fourteen by a bunch of
Speaker 1: the master Coin slash Omnique cruise. This typically Brock piers
Speaker 1: yantis Quigly Reeves and sellers came over and decided to start.
Speaker 1: But if they called at the time real Coin, which
Speaker 1: they advertised as this dollar batted token on the block
Speaker 1: chain that was going to use what was then called
Speaker 1: the master Coin layer and is now called the omni
Speaker 1: layer on top of Bitcoin. Sometime in that summer of
Speaker 1: two thousand and fourteen, when they were going around pitching
Speaker 1: this idea, one Carlo Davissini, Jean Ludoviticus Vandervelt and Phil
Speaker 1: Potter got involved, and the exact timeline of their involvement
Speaker 1: and when the control of the entity fully shifted is
Speaker 1: difficult to parse out. But by the time the first
Speaker 1: tethers were issued in October November of two thousand and fourteen,
Speaker 1: Tether was entirely under the control of one Carlo Davissini,
Speaker 1: Phil Potter, and Jean Ludovit Jean Ludoviticus Vanderbilt, the bitfin
Speaker 1: X executives. So it started by this group of people
Speaker 1: from master Coin and then taken over and really launched
Speaker 1: on to the bitfin x executives in two thousand and fourteen.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to ask the same question in a
Speaker 1: slightly different way, but why the need for stable coins
Speaker 1: at all? Like why in crypto can't you just transact
Speaker 1: in US dollar deposits for the majority of offshore exchanges,
Speaker 1: Like why this market need that this group of very
Speaker 1: disparate people came together to serve. My understanding is that
Speaker 1: it was very challenging even for the most quote unquote
Speaker 1: legitimate of cryptocurrency businesses in this era, to get and
Speaker 1: maintain consistent banking relationships. And so the idea with Teather
Speaker 1: is that Tether would build these relationships and in doing
Speaker 1: so allow a variety of other cryptocurrency businesses to effectively
Speaker 1: benefit from their banking relationships by allowing them to have
Speaker 1: this pseudo dollar token that allowed them to mimic trading
Speaker 1: against the dollar and all the conveniences therein without having
Speaker 1: to seek out and maintain relationships with banks that could
Speaker 1: transact in the US dollar. Right, So this is a
Speaker 1: really key thing. Rather than if you want to set
Speaker 1: up a crypto exchange, rather than you going through all
Speaker 1: of the work to set up bank accounts in different
Speaker 1: countries and all that, you're just like, oh, you're just
Speaker 1: like create a platform that allows you to onboard Tether.
Speaker 1: Tether already has the banking relationship and instead of trading
Speaker 1: a dollar, as you trade in the dollar denominated stable coins. Now,
Speaker 1: who is Tether's bank in the beginning. So if they're
Speaker 1: going to have this dollar denominated stable coiners they're going
Speaker 1: to hold their dollars, where were they holding their dollars?
Speaker 1: How did they get a banking relationship? Again, it's a
Speaker 1: little bit difficult to pass completely. We know at least
Speaker 1: part of the reserves were held at a variety of
Speaker 1: Taiwanese banks, many of which relied on Wells Fargo for
Speaker 1: their US correspondent banking services. And we found this out
Speaker 1: because in two thousand and seventeen, Wells Fargo ended up
Speaker 1: cutting off correspondent banking access for bitfoin X and Tether,
Speaker 1: and bitfoin X and Tether filed a lawsuit they describe
Speaker 1: as purely to buy time against Wells Fargo at that point. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: they were banking at a variety of Taiwanese banks, and
Speaker 1: getting correspondent banking from Wells Fargo. The reason I'm pausing
Speaker 1: is that bitfn x is and Tether's relationship with payments
Speaker 1: processor Crypto Capital Core stretches back to two thousand and fourteen,
Speaker 1: and so it is possible that some portion of the reserves,
Speaker 1: besides being held in these Taiwanese banks, was already being
Speaker 1: held in Crypto Capital Core. Besides that, we know from
Speaker 1: the CFTC settlement with Teather that as early as six
Speaker 1: Tether was being backed by non cash assets, and so
Speaker 1: we have to expect that some portion of those were
Speaker 1: being held outside of those bank accounts as well. So
Speaker 1: this kind of gets to the question over the weird
Speaker 1: pr strategy, which I expect that's going to be sort
Speaker 1: of a theme that comes up a lot in this conversation.
Speaker 1: But but if we know that Tether was created to
Speaker 1: allow sort of easier on boarding of dollar deposits into
Speaker 1: the crypto so um by allowing them to build and
Speaker 1: establish these relationships with various banks, why wouldn't they just
Speaker 1: be upfront about who their bank partners are. Bitfn X
Speaker 1: and Tether in whale pool team speaks and official communications
Speaker 1: have often expressed a fear that if the extent of
Speaker 1: their relationships with various banking partners is made public, those
Speaker 1: banking relationships will cease to exist. For some reason, it
Speaker 1: seems that Tethern bit pnexes banks and the relationships therein
Speaker 1: have to be kept somewhat secret in order for tether
Speaker 1: and bit pnex to continue to offer that. The fear
Speaker 1: when they say something like that is that the reason
Speaker 1: they need to be coy about it is because the
Speaker 1: banks are not fully aware of what they may be banking,
Speaker 1: or there is some other challenge that presents itself to
Speaker 1: these banks when it becomes public that they are banking
Speaker 1: these entities, you know, speaking of Okay, maybe the bank
Speaker 1: doesn't want you to do crypto stuff, or maybe an
Speaker 1: entity is obfuscating what it did or what its relationship
Speaker 1: with bank the bank was when they opened the account.
Speaker 1: I seem to recall there being some video in which
Speaker 1: Sam Bankman Freed talks about having named Elma Research so
Speaker 1: that it wasn't just Alameda. Is that my hallucinating that
Speaker 1: or did that actually happen? No, there was an interview
Speaker 1: with Sam Bankman Freed was asked why Elma Research was
Speaker 1: named Alameda Research and he talked about how when he
Speaker 1: was arbitraging the Japanese premium that having the name Elma
Speaker 1: Research and convincing people that this was a research firm
Speaker 1: made it easier for him to access and maintain banking
Speaker 1: relationships that allowed them to arbitrage. That came. Maybe just
Speaker 1: going back to the beginning of Tether for a second,
Speaker 1: so I understand the function that Tether was serving in
Speaker 1: the crypto community, but what was their own business model?
Speaker 1: So what was the idea behind how Tether as a
Speaker 1: company was going to make money. They charged a few
Speaker 1: basis points and issuance and redemption, and I think if
Speaker 1: their reserves were going to be earning any yield in
Speaker 1: the bank accounts they were stored in, then that yield
Speaker 1: would go to Tether the corporation. Stable coins are a
Speaker 1: challenging business model. Circle has struggled to do it profitably.
Speaker 1: So just on this note, and again we're sort of
Speaker 1: diving headlong already into one of the bigger issues with Tether.
Speaker 1: But it does seem like if you're expecting Tether to
Speaker 1: maintain the peg with dollar denominated assets, but the company
Speaker 1: itself is making money by generating yields from those assets
Speaker 1: that would seem to be almost immediately a conflict of interest, right,
Speaker 1: or at least a temptation to potentially invest in higher yielding,
Speaker 1: riskier assets to generate more money for the company itself. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that Bloomberg Business Week's reporting seek Fox is
Speaker 1: reporting on this really kind of points to that. Specifically,
Speaker 1: where you see when they're banking at Noble Bank and
Speaker 1: Trust founded by John bettson brock Peers, supposedly one Carlo
Speaker 1: Davissini going to John Betts and pleading asking for ways
Speaker 1: that they can earn additional yield on their reserves. And
Speaker 1: I think this is consistent with one Carlo Davissini, the
Speaker 1: chief financial officer of Tether and Silvano di Stefano, the
Speaker 1: chief investment officer of Tether, being partners together in Blue Bit,
Speaker 1: the cryptocurrency hedge fund. Right, is that around this period
Speaker 1: we have pretty solid reporting that Tether was very much
Speaker 1: interested in going out and trying to find additional ways
Speaker 1: to earn yield, and that if we look, even if
Speaker 1: we take Tether completely at their word, if we look
Speaker 1: at their attestations today, their reserves are far riskier than
Speaker 1: they were promised to be back. When Tether was started
Speaker 1: in two thousand fourteen, the original promise was that every
Speaker 1: single Tether issued would have a corresponding dollar in a
Speaker 1: bank account to back them. Now the promise is that
Speaker 1: there is a dollar of value in some nebulous collection
Speaker 1: of assets that backs that tether. And so I think
Speaker 1: that it's very clear it has presented a conflict of
Speaker 1: interest and that Tether has continued to move further and
Speaker 1: further away from their initial promise as a way to
Speaker 1: generate additional yield and income for the people running Tether. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you mentioned the word nebulous, and I remember there was
Speaker 1: this great note from Barclays from their money market and
Speaker 1: credit guys basically saying that Tether was using language around
Speaker 1: its investments that no one in the financial industry had
Speaker 1: ever seen. They kept referring to something called a reverse
Speaker 1: repo note, and then yeah, they seemed to imply it
Speaker 1: was some sort of like structured credit note but also
Speaker 1: a reverse repo, which was all very very strange. So
Speaker 1: speaking of language, you know, I want to get a
Speaker 1: little bit more to the bank, the post Wells Fargo
Speaker 1: or post Taiwan bank banking relationships, but before gone what
Speaker 1: is an attestation? Because I know that Tether does not
Speaker 1: get a formal like audit, but they say they published
Speaker 1: an attestation. What is that? So I'm not an account intern,
Speaker 1: auditor or a lawyer, and so I want to get
Speaker 1: that off the jump. But based on the auditors I've
Speaker 1: talked to about this, and attestation is a much lower
Speaker 1: level of assurance where the auditor or accountant is looking
Speaker 1: at a set of records compiled for them by the
Speaker 1: management of the entity, and they are attesting that the
Speaker 1: records they have received match up with whatever they're supposed to. Generally,
Speaker 1: they don't involve the same kind of controls testing as
Speaker 1: an audit. They're generally done point in time and are
Speaker 1: not looking at necessarily the flows leading up to that
Speaker 1: point in time, which has historically been a problem with
Speaker 1: Tether's at the stations. And so they provide some level
Speaker 1: of assurance, but notably less than like a full financial audit.
Speaker 1: So let's go back two things, I guess, but you know,
Speaker 1: after the they lost the ability to use the correspondent
Speaker 1: the banks that had a corresponding relationship with Taiwan or
Speaker 1: sorry without Wells Fargo, with whom did they start banking,
Speaker 1: and can the the assets that Tether claims it has
Speaker 1: can they be seen on published regulatory filings of those banks.
Speaker 1: So after they lose correspondent banking from Wills Fargo, Tether's
Speaker 1: banking becomes a bit of an enigma. They held little
Speaker 1: over sixty million dollars at the Bank of Montreal in
Speaker 1: Stuart Hogner's account their general counsel. The remainder of their
Speaker 1: banking from that period until they opened their account at
Speaker 1: Noble Bank was supposedly a receivable from Bitfinex's account at
Speaker 1: Noble Bank, which was the international financial entity started brock
Speaker 1: Pearson John Betts in Puerto Rico. The issue with this
Speaker 1: is that if you look at Bitnex's account at Noble
Speaker 1: Bank during this period, and this is based on the
Speaker 1: New York Attorney General investigation, bitfn x only received deposits
Speaker 1: from two other institutions, and neither of those institutions purchased tethers.
Speaker 1: The amount in Stuart Hogner's account over this entire period
Speaker 1: did not change at all, and yet the number of
Speaker 1: tethers in circulation exploded during this period, and so it
Speaker 1: is incredibly difficult to figure out what the flow of
Speaker 1: funds was during this era and how they were directly
Speaker 1: backing Tether. My guess is that many users were interacting
Speaker 1: with Crypto Capital Court, the payments processor that both bit
Speaker 1: pohn X and Tether depended on, and that they were
Speaker 1: sending both tethers and dollars to Crypto Capital Court to
Speaker 1: issue and redeemed tethers, and these were then marked like
Speaker 1: on their accounting records as funds that were then owed
Speaker 1: to the account at Noble Bank, which was nominally holding
Speaker 1: the reserves of Tether despite being in the name of
Speaker 1: bitfn X. This continued until it was time for Freedman
Speaker 1: LLP to finally give their September fifteenth at testation to
Speaker 1: Tether's reserves. On the morning of September fifteen, Tether finally
Speaker 1: got an account at Noble Bank and Trust, and they
Speaker 1: transferred hundreds of millions of dollars from bitfnex's account that
Speaker 1: morning to Tether's account on that day, and then that
Speaker 1: evening Freedman LLP comes in and attest to the state
Speaker 1: of Tether's reserves. Then from that point on the bank
Speaker 1: believed to be largely continuously at Crypto Capital Court and
Speaker 1: Noble Bank until Noble Bank starts to close down in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eighteen. Then we get to the period
Speaker 1: where they start relying really heavily on Crypto Capital Core
Speaker 1: until Crypto Capital Core ends up having about eight hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty million total dollars seized, and we eventually in
Speaker 1: the summer of two thousand and eighteen into the fall
Speaker 1: of two thousand and eighteen, get more and more into
Speaker 1: their reliance on del Tech Bank and Trust. In the Bahamas,
Speaker 1: Dell Tech Bank and Trust, you were able to see
Speaker 1: a large inflow of deposits based on a Central Banka
Speaker 1: Bahamas regulatory records showing that Dell Tech was receiving a
Speaker 1: bunch of assets that they had not had before, suggesting
Speaker 1: that Tether was moving something into there at that point.
Speaker 1: So we kind of have a couple of things to
Speaker 1: look at when it comes to trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what tether is actually doing. So we have the at
Speaker 1: of stations, you know, which may or may not be accurate,
Speaker 1: but we also have just the sheer volume of tether
Speaker 1: in existence, because we know that every tether issued is
Speaker 1: supposed to be backed by you know, it used to
Speaker 1: be one dollar and now it's one dollar of dollar
Speaker 1: denominated assets. But what does the sort of expansion of
Speaker 1: tether supply actually tell you about what the company has
Speaker 1: been doing and experiencing. I don't know that the expansion
Speaker 1: of tether supply really gives us that much information, except
Speaker 1: that it's supposed to indicate that actual dollars are flowing
Speaker 1: from other entities in this as into Tether's accounts, and
Speaker 1: then tethers are being issued. And so it's primarily interesting
Speaker 1: because there should be a corresponding like, there should be
Speaker 1: corresponding flows through the banking system for all the tethers
Speaker 1: that have supposed that they ever been issued and redeemed,
Speaker 1: and that is a reasonably large amount of money to
Speaker 1: have been flowing through the banking system. So just on
Speaker 1: that note, and also kind of going back to the
Speaker 1: Barclays analysts who were talking about, we've never heard anything
Speaker 1: called a reverse repo note, but there is this expectation
Speaker 1: that if tether is out in the market with you know,
Speaker 1: fifty or sixty billion dollars worth of assets that it's investing,
Speaker 1: that someone in the traditional financial system would know them
Speaker 1: and be familiar with them, and that people you know,
Speaker 1: on repo dusks and things like that would be familiar
Speaker 1: with them as a customer, and yet if you talk
Speaker 1: to people in traditional finance, that doesn't really seemed to
Speaker 1: be the case, Like no one is talking about how
Speaker 1: they're transacting with Tether on a regular basis. What's going
Speaker 1: on there. That's a really fantastic question, Tracy, and I
Speaker 1: think it was last year that Financial Times went out
Speaker 1: after Tether announced that they were one of the seven
Speaker 1: largest holders of commercial paper in the world and asked
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of commercial paper trading desks, hey, have
Speaker 1: you noticed this new entrant into the commercial paper market?
Speaker 1: And they all universally said who. So, yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: fantastic question. Where is Tether in these markets? It's possible
Speaker 1: that Tether is transacting using entities that aren't called Tether, like,
Speaker 1: for example, blue Bit Capital, the cryptocurrency hedge fund that
Speaker 1: one Carlo da Vissini and Silvannod Stephane were partners in.
Speaker 1: Could be del Chain, the cryptocurrency focused offshoot of Dell
Speaker 1: Tech Bank and Trust that Paulo Ardoino used to be
Speaker 1: an executive director of. It. Could be full ger Alpha,
Speaker 1: the cryptocurrency hedge fund spun off from del Chain that
Speaker 1: was onboarded onto bitfin x well. Paulo was a director
Speaker 1: it bell Chain. There's a possibility that just these deaths
Speaker 1: don't recognize the name of Tether because Tether isn't transacting
Speaker 1: in the name of Tether, or it could be a
Speaker 1: lot of other things that we don't have visibility into yet.
Speaker 1: But it is challenging to figure out just where is
Speaker 1: all this money coming from, where is it going, and
Speaker 1: why is no one noticing it coming or going? You know,
Speaker 1: I wanna talk compare and contrast Tether a little bit
Speaker 1: to other stable coins. The other like really big one
Speaker 1: is u S d C, And in fact, just today
Speaker 1: December five, we got the news that they're actually canceling.
Speaker 1: Circle is no longer doing it's back, so that's kind
Speaker 1: of interesting timing. But like, okay, with with something like
Speaker 1: us d C, do we have very clear visibility into
Speaker 1: where their money is and like compare like the sort
Speaker 1: of level of transparency we have with Tether versus these
Speaker 1: other stable coins, which my understanding is they seem to
Speaker 1: be people are less suspicious of them. I'm generally less
Speaker 1: suspicious of Circle than of Tether. Part of this is
Speaker 1: because Circle has made fewer misrepresentations in public than tether has,
Speaker 1: though to be clear, there was a period where coin
Speaker 1: based was advertising USDC is fully backed by cash after
Speaker 1: they had started using other assets, including treasuries and commercial
Speaker 1: paper to back it. But broadly USDC and Circle have
Speaker 1: been much better at their disclosures than tether has. They
Speaker 1: are not being forced by the New York Attorney General
Speaker 1: to do attestations, but are doing them monthly instead of quarterly.
Speaker 1: They have a more expected mix of assets. You don't
Speaker 1: see the lending encircles, books, you don't see the reverse
Speaker 1: repos or produced produciary deposits. You don't see bitcoin backing Circle,
Speaker 1: you don't see investments in Sampson Mao's gaming company Exordium
Speaker 1: backing Circle and like Circle itself, and they were preparing
Speaker 1: for theirs back did go out and get audits for
Speaker 1: their firm as a whole, And so there is kind
Speaker 1: of that structural difference. Over time, the claimed asset mixes
Speaker 1: for the two have moved closer together. Tether has claim
Speaker 1: to ditch commercial paper in favor of increasingly relying on treasuries,
Speaker 1: and the mix of like treasuries to cash and stuff
Speaker 1: for Tether is now much closer to Circle than it
Speaker 1: was like a year ago. So I think broadly the
Speaker 1: difference between the two is the level of disclosure, the
Speaker 1: level of openness, and the history of deceit. There's also
Speaker 1: like both Circle and Paxos in the United States have
Speaker 1: started the process of trying to acquire banks or apply
Speaker 1: for bank charters, likely anticipating that at some point some
Speaker 1: kind of legislation is going to pass that is going
Speaker 1: to move stable coins into the broader banking regulatory framework.
Speaker 1: Tether has not started those moves, and I expect would
Speaker 1: have a difficult time getting approval for a banking charter
Speaker 1: or approval to buy a bank in the United States.
Speaker 1: You know, you mentioned the word to see, and I
Speaker 1: think certainly at a minimum you could say that Tether
Speaker 1: has pursued a rather weird strategy of disclosure and public
Speaker 1: relations where you know, sometimes it seems to intentionally be
Speaker 1: kind of coy with information or maybe outright deceiving people,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't really seem to have mattered to the
Speaker 1: people who are still using Tether to do a lot
Speaker 1: of crypto transactions. And you know, at various times Tether
Speaker 1: has been described as a sort of lynch pin in
Speaker 1: the environment that is the crypto universe. You know, it
Speaker 1: is the thing that allows a lot of transactions and
Speaker 1: trading and betting to take place. Why why does it
Speaker 1: not seem to matter that much to people who are
Speaker 1: using crypto. Well, tether has existed since two thousand and
Speaker 1: fourteen and has been mostly worth a dollar since two
Speaker 1: thousand and fourteen. Like I, I can talk and list
Speaker 1: many very specific lies in things that tether has done.
Speaker 1: But the truth is that over most of that time,
Speaker 1: for most of the people who used tether, it was
Speaker 1: worth what they expected it to be worth, It was
Speaker 1: able to be transferred from exchange to exchange, and it
Speaker 1: broadly represented about a dollar's worth of value. There's also
Speaker 1: the dynamic that many of the largest issuers and redeemers
Speaker 1: of tether, like all me to research who was the
Speaker 1: largest heads of November one, they did not hold on
Speaker 1: to the tethers for very long. They were often selling
Speaker 1: them directly into the market, using them for trades, and
Speaker 1: so their overall exposure to tether was more of like
Speaker 1: the systemic exposure of this thing existing, rather than like
Speaker 1: the exposure to them specifically, if they're token suddenly becoming
Speaker 1: valueless The other thing with Tether and bit for next
Speaker 1: that becomes part of a channel is that after they
Speaker 1: were hacked in two thousand and sixteen, they issued their
Speaker 1: BFx token, and many of those tokens, rather than eventually
Speaker 1: being redeemed for cash, were redeemed for equity in the
Speaker 1: parent company for bitfn x, and so many people who
Speaker 1: had been trading on bit for x in two thousand
Speaker 1: and sixteen ended up becoming equity owners and having a
Speaker 1: vested interest in these entities being successful and growing because
Speaker 1: it directly benefited them. So there's a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: kind of different competing dynamics. One, it's that Tether has
Speaker 1: been largely good for what it was supposed to for
Speaker 1: the time it's existed. Tether has been around and has
Speaker 1: connections to many of these other entities in the cryptocurrency industry,
Speaker 1: and then a decent portion of people in the industry,
Speaker 1: especially those who have been around for several years, have
Speaker 1: at least some vested interest in these entities being successful.
Speaker 1: You know, I saw a tweet right before we started
Speaker 1: recording this episode, and it was someone saying, my pet
Speaker 1: theory is that an amazing amount of crypto is going
Speaker 1: to turn out to be twenty dudes and an army
Speaker 1: of shell companies. And when you when you describe this
Speaker 1: sort of web of relationships, it does seem and this
Speaker 1: is something that came up with f t X and
Speaker 1: Alameda clearly, but it does seem so incestuous the entire industry.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you specifically about Celsius as well,
Speaker 1: what the relationship was between f t X and Celsius,
Speaker 1: and also just generally how much of crypto is just
Speaker 1: collateralized by more crypto because Tether is sort of the
Speaker 1: ultimate collateral in the ecosystem, and you do get a
Speaker 1: sense that there is a lot of leverage built on
Speaker 1: that foundation. You asked about the relationship between f t
Speaker 1: X and Celsius, I'm gonna start the relationship between Tether
Speaker 1: and Celsius. So Tether was the lead investor in Celsius
Speaker 1: Series A round. According to the lawsuit by Jason Stone,
Speaker 1: one of the former traders at Celsius, Tether's loan to
Speaker 1: Celsius in was effectively a bailout to allow celsie Is
Speaker 1: to continue operating. And we know that Tether continued to
Speaker 1: have these secured loans that they extended Celsius as they went.
Speaker 1: Celsius's exposure to ft X and Alameda has been a
Speaker 1: little bit more challenging to figure out, especially with Massinsky's
Speaker 1: tweets the last couple of days trying to muddy the water.
Speaker 1: But it was clear that Alimated Research was lending from
Speaker 1: Celsius and they were trading together, but the full extent
Speaker 1: of the relationship is not entirely clear now as to
Speaker 1: how much of the industry is like crypto collateralized loans,
Speaker 1: loans to related party and things like that, I think
Speaker 1: it is quite large. And that tweet you were talking about,
Speaker 1: it was from a conversation from a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: and what we were talking about at that time was
Speaker 1: Crypto Capital Core, the payments processor for bitfin x, Tether,
Speaker 1: Quadriga c X, and then they also provided services for
Speaker 1: several other exchanges crack in, bitmas, etcetera. And we were
Speaker 1: talking about them because the directors for that, even Manuel Molina,
Speaker 1: Lee As Josef and the rest, were directors for a
Speaker 1: ton of other small companies around the world, including like
Speaker 1: nominally mining companies, resource companies, these other things, but they
Speaker 1: all primarily existed to provide banking to cryptocurrency companies, and
Speaker 1: so we were talking about when in that conversation with
Speaker 1: people who made the tweet about how all of these
Speaker 1: different things that we're providing payment services to, all of
Speaker 1: these different cryptocurrency exchanges, were these couple of individuals around
Speaker 1: the world who were just starting up tons of different
Speaker 1: companies and trying to get access to bank accounts for them.
Speaker 1: And I think we've now seen, moving back to your
Speaker 1: question about like cryptoclateralized stuff, we saw the FTT collateralized loans,
Speaker 1: We've seen a variety of other cryptoclateralized loans, and we've
Speaker 1: even seen a ton of large lending desks, including ones
Speaker 1: like Black five, who were claiming not to do unsecured lending.
Speaker 1: We're doing large amounts of unsecured lending as well, not
Speaker 1: even cryptoclateralized, just giving out money, right, And so I
Speaker 1: think that it is quite likely, and I think we're
Speaker 1: going to continue to see as the FTX bankruptcy progresses,
Speaker 1: that a lot of entities were doing this kind of
Speaker 1: lending and had various exposures that would seem atypical or
Speaker 1: surprising to people in the traditional finance industry. Speaking of
Speaker 1: the web of the web, everyone connected. What's the deal
Speaker 1: with this tiny bank that like FTX I bought a
Speaker 1: steak in and like I think Washington State that had
Speaker 1: like three employees. The New York Times reported on it.
Speaker 1: What's that all about? And I think there's a tether
Speaker 1: connection there. Yeah, So that is Farmington State Bank in Washington.
Speaker 1: And Protest was actually able to get an interview with
Speaker 1: Hanvir Schalapin, the chief digital officer of that bank, where
Speaker 1: we got some additional context on this. So as of
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, it was an incredibly small bank,
Speaker 1: like ten million total in deposit deposits, putting off a
Speaker 1: total of like six d K and revenue per year,
Speaker 1: had a few dozen accounts, three employees, tiny little branch,
Speaker 1: like one of the thirty smallest banks in America. And
Speaker 1: that was true until the head of Deltech Bank can
Speaker 1: Trust in the Bahama US, the bank I already mentioned
Speaker 1: was banking Teller and elm to Research went out and decided, sorry,
Speaker 1: they didn't go out. They've been very careful to say
Speaker 1: they didn't go out, so I should be careful as well.
Speaker 1: The chairman of their bank went out with no connection
Speaker 1: to the bank. He's a chairman of and decided he
Speaker 1: wanted to purchase a U S bank for no reason
Speaker 1: that had anything to do with his bank in the Bahamas.
Speaker 1: And he found this bank in Washington, again with nothing
Speaker 1: to do with his bank in the Bahamas, and was
Speaker 1: able to get eleven point five million dollars from ELM
Speaker 1: to research to go out and buy this bank. They
Speaker 1: were giving it like a post money valuation of like
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty million dollars and ten million in deposits,
Speaker 1: which is an absurd bank valuation. But continuing, they rename
Speaker 1: it Moonstone Bank and Trust, according to han Vir, because
Speaker 1: they wanted to bank cryptocurrency assets which were going to
Speaker 1: the Moon, and cannabis assets, which as we all know,
Speaker 1: are great for getting you stone their entry into the
Speaker 1: I didn't know that about the stone part. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: that really why the second half. So the Moon is
Speaker 1: crypto and the stone is cannabis. Yes, Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, that's so good. I just got that.
Speaker 1: I'm glad I didn't. I'm glad I stopped and plauses
Speaker 1: there because that is a great detail that I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have wanted anyone to miss. Okay, the Moon's don't Okay, sorry,
Speaker 1: that's good. And so then they get four new accounts.
Speaker 1: Their deposits go from like ten million to thirty million
Speaker 1: with these four new accounts, and they were able to
Speaker 1: get Federal Reserve approvals, start using fed wire and things
Speaker 1: like that, and this tiny little bank in Washington got
Speaker 1: this investment from Alemida Research and suddenly became much much larger.
Speaker 1: First of all, can I just say it's incredibly impressive
Speaker 1: the way you are able to keep this very very
Speaker 1: complicated web of relationships and names in your head, because
Speaker 1: I certainly wouldn't be able to do it. But but
Speaker 1: I just wanted to ask a really obvious question, and
Speaker 1: I suspect I know the answer, but I think it's
Speaker 1: kind of important to touch upon. But who regulates Tether
Speaker 1: if any one? Well, I mean they have one money
Speaker 1: transmitter license in the United States to an old Taiwanese
Speaker 1: entity that they don't really use anymore, so finn sent right.
Speaker 1: But more seriously, there is no like single regulator overseeing
Speaker 1: Tether's operations. There's I think a variety that could try
Speaker 1: to make a claim that they have jurisdiction over Tether,
Speaker 1: but they're going to have to probably do that via
Speaker 1: enforcement actions. It's a British Virgin Islands and a Hong
Speaker 1: Kong domiciled company, so nominally the British Virgin Islands regulators
Speaker 1: and the Hong Kong regulators might have a claim over it.
Speaker 1: Part of the challenge with any of these cryptocurrency companies
Speaker 1: is that they are very deliberately set up with the
Speaker 1: goal of avoiding regulators and most regulatory tactics. They pick
Speaker 1: locations where they think they can gain regulator approval or
Speaker 1: avoid regulator ire and then they try to structure their
Speaker 1: operations and even their executives in a way where it's
Speaker 1: going to be challenging for countries with more active regulators
Speaker 1: to pursue them or to stop them from doing what
Speaker 1: they want. I want to just go back to the
Speaker 1: question that Tracy asked, because I still feel like I
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of hair on tether, so
Speaker 1: to speak, all these questions, etcetera. I get why. In
Speaker 1: the beginning, maybe you know, various entities used te tether
Speaker 1: to trade and it did the job, and maybe they
Speaker 1: had an interest in seeing tether success due to other
Speaker 1: equity exposures that they may have had. But today, in
Speaker 1: given the sort of relative level of transparency. Given the
Speaker 1: perceived level of scrutiny that faces tether, why do you
Speaker 1: think there's still so much demand for using it both
Speaker 1: as a money transfer device between exchanges as a base
Speaker 1: pair for trading, Like, where where is the demand coming
Speaker 1: from today? Well, I mean, I think first we should
Speaker 1: be very clear that it seems like the demand for
Speaker 1: Tether has plummeted over the last several years. Like if
Speaker 1: you look at the relative stable coin dominance from like
Speaker 1: April nineteen when the New York Attorney General filed their
Speaker 1: injunction and two now, Tether's dominance has vastly decreased among
Speaker 1: stable coins, right. And if we look at the like
Speaker 1: broader defy area, we often see Tether being priced at
Speaker 1: a discount, valued at a discount to other stable coins.
Speaker 1: Maker Dow won't even use Tether as collateral for a
Speaker 1: lot of their things, right, And you see that across
Speaker 1: some other lending protocols and things like that, where Tether
Speaker 1: will be priced materially different than USDC. There has been
Speaker 1: a certain repricing of tether risk over the last several years.
Speaker 1: I think, just broadly, it is an old instrument that's
Speaker 1: existed for a long time, and that one of the
Speaker 1: more recent things that really drove tether's growth before b
Speaker 1: U s D and before finance across collateral was that
Speaker 1: like when finance launched their collateralized futures products, the easiest
Speaker 1: way to collateralize those was with tether's and so there
Speaker 1: was this massive increase in the issuance of tethers from
Speaker 1: these firms like Alimated Research in Cumberland Global and these
Speaker 1: that wanted to trade futures on finance and needed to
Speaker 1: collateralize those positions. And so because Binance chose tether for that,
Speaker 1: you saw this massive increase in the number of tethers
Speaker 1: issued during that period, so these firms would be able
Speaker 1: to trade that product. Once finance switched to cross asset
Speaker 1: collateralization and started favoring b USD and stuff for those assets,
Speaker 1: we started to see a lot of the dominance and
Speaker 1: position for tether and those markets start to decrease. So
Speaker 1: why is tether still used Because it's been used for
Speaker 1: a long time. There's a lot of them out there,
Speaker 1: and tether is perceived position in the industry, especially outside
Speaker 1: of the United States, is that that they have been
Speaker 1: around for a long time, and some even see their
Speaker 1: ability to survive a New York Attorney General investigation and
Speaker 1: a CFTC investigation and continue operating as proof that there
Speaker 1: must not have been anything so abjectively criminal that those
Speaker 1: organizations wouldn't choose to try to get them shut down.
Speaker 1: You know, you mentioned the fact that for most of
Speaker 1: its history it's been able to maintain the one to
Speaker 1: one peg with the dollar as another you know, sort
Speaker 1: of selling point for people in the crypto ecosystem. I
Speaker 1: guess my question is, like, what would be the thing
Speaker 1: that would prompt the peg to start to fall apart? Because,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned in the intro, we have seen it
Speaker 1: dip below one at various times in history, notably during
Speaker 1: the Spring crypto blow up when Tara Luna collapsed, and
Speaker 1: recently in November with f TX, but it hasn't really
Speaker 1: dropped to the extent that I think a lot of
Speaker 1: critics of tether might have expected it to. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: when tether is below a dollar, those who are able
Speaker 1: to redeem tethers should be redeeming tethers. It's free money
Speaker 1: that's sitting out there right if you can buy it
Speaker 1: up for less than point nine cents and give it
Speaker 1: back to tether for nine point nine cents. You're making
Speaker 1: easy money in that trade. And that's what we've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of firms do. During the tera to pegging.
Speaker 1: Almeda Research was very actively arbitraging the tether peg, buying
Speaker 1: up tethers and sending them back to the treasury, presumably
Speaker 1: to redeem and make those that easy money. If one
Speaker 1: of those firms that does the arbitrage sends it back
Speaker 1: to tether and the process is even more abnormally messy
Speaker 1: than Sam Bankman Freed would normally claim it is, then
Speaker 1: they may decide that whatever money they're making from that
Speaker 1: arbitrage is no longer worth trying to make. And when
Speaker 1: those firms decide that and they stopped trying to arbitrage
Speaker 1: the peg, then whatever is causing it to deviate continues
Speaker 1: to deviate. The fact that we've seen it return suggests
Speaker 1: that there are entities that have been able to buy
Speaker 1: up and redeem tethers and make that trade. What would
Speaker 1: cause it to break would be something that makes that
Speaker 1: no longer true, where people are trying to extract that
Speaker 1: value and are not receiving it. In turn, part of
Speaker 1: a strange dynamic for me with tether. That makes this
Speaker 1: a more complicated question is that it's supply dynamics don't
Speaker 1: necessarily match what we would expect, like it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to expand and contract in time with the rest of
Speaker 1: the cryptocurrency industry. And yeah, this is why I was
Speaker 1: asking you about the sort of outstanding number of tethers before,
Speaker 1: but go ahead, yeah, and this is this. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: so like we see tether for a long time, it
Speaker 1: basically just monotonically increased with like one brief decrease. And
Speaker 1: we've seen more redemptions now than we have historically, but
Speaker 1: still generally tether tends to be slower to start decreasing
Speaker 1: in market capped than the other stable coins. And the
Speaker 1: reason for this has not been entirely clear. For a while,
Speaker 1: it looked like the explanation was that many tethers were
Speaker 1: destined for purchasers and entities who were not likely to redeem.
Speaker 1: So for a long time there was an active demand
Speaker 1: for tethers in like the Chinese over the counter trading
Speaker 1: market or are for Chinese bitcoin miners and things like that,
Speaker 1: and many of these entities preferred having the tethers because
Speaker 1: of the ease of transacting them, then the corresponding dollars
Speaker 1: and the relative risk of tethers was like acceptable for
Speaker 1: their purposes, and this seems to have been a pretty
Speaker 1: important like sink for tethers. We see this in like
Speaker 1: the decrypt reporting on the Babbel finance blew up. We're
Speaker 1: supposedly in a manner very similar to the Celsius bailout.
Speaker 1: Tether stepped in and bailed out the bailed out Babbel finance.
Speaker 1: Right now, it's a little bit less clear to me
Speaker 1: why we don't see tether expand and contracting quite the
Speaker 1: way we expect, And I think that's part of the
Speaker 1: challenge in figuring out why tether doesn't lose its peg
Speaker 1: in the way people expect. I think there are people
Speaker 1: for whom tethers are worth more than the dollar backing
Speaker 1: them because of some additional convenience they provide, and that
Speaker 1: some of these people who are interested in these tethers
Speaker 1: are people who are unlikely to redeem them. So because
Speaker 1: there's this kind of demand sinc for tethers, these tethers
Speaker 1: that go out but that are unlikely to ever come
Speaker 1: back in, there's a little bit of a cushion and
Speaker 1: Tether's operations that make it easier for them to handle
Speaker 1: the remaining entities, who are the larger cryptocurrency market making
Speaker 1: funds and quantitative trading funds who are actively redeeming, issuing,
Speaker 1: and transacting in these instruments. So I just want to
Speaker 1: sort of reiterate this point because I think it's really important.
Speaker 1: If you have tether or usd T, you can redeem
Speaker 1: it directly with tether itself, but I believe you have
Speaker 1: to set up an account and there's like a minimum
Speaker 1: of a hundred thousand worth of tokens or something like
Speaker 1: that um in order to transact directly. So what most
Speaker 1: people would do is you would go into the secondary
Speaker 1: market and just sell there. And in the secondary market,
Speaker 1: the peg is maintained through you know, basically market mayers
Speaker 1: who kind of operate like exchange traded funds, would where
Speaker 1: if there is an arbitrage opportunity, if Tether is trading
Speaker 1: below the one dollar peg, they would go in and
Speaker 1: sort of arbitrage that and make money in order to
Speaker 1: keep it close to that peg. So what you're saying
Speaker 1: is if the market makers are no longer able to
Speaker 1: fulfill that capacity, if they're having balance sheet issues, if
Speaker 1: they're risk averse that kind of thing, then that could
Speaker 1: be what would trigger a substantial deep pegging event for tether. Yeah, basically,
Speaker 1: And I think part of that is like when Sambankment
Speaker 1: Freed came on here, he talked about how the process
Speaker 1: of redeeming tethers was sometimes messy, and like, that's not
Speaker 1: generally or necessarily what you would expect for this. You
Speaker 1: would expect that element to research sends the tethers back
Speaker 1: to the tether treasury and tether from their bank account wires,
Speaker 1: element to research the corresponding number of dollars. Right. That
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like it should ever be a messy process,
Speaker 1: But we know from one of the largest tether issuers
Speaker 1: and redeemers that it was, And so whatever is causing
Speaker 1: that messiness in the process is the thing that I
Speaker 1: would expect Mike someday, cause it so that one of
Speaker 1: the firms that does the arbitrage will blink and choose
Speaker 1: to stop doing it. Bennett, I think we could go
Speaker 1: on for a pretty long time, because this is like
Speaker 1: a fascinating conversation and your knowledge of the detail is great.
Speaker 1: But I think that is also a great place to
Speaker 1: stop it. So thank you so much for coming out
Speaker 1: offl thanks for having me. That was really great, Unet,
Speaker 1: that was amazing, Tracy. I thought that was really fantastic.
Speaker 1: And again, you know, this sort of the web and
Speaker 1: the degree of like interconnectedness among and we only we
Speaker 1: only looked at a slice, but it really is striking
Speaker 1: the agree to which every entity seems to have some
Speaker 1: sort of relationship with every other entity and crypto totally.
Speaker 1: I kept getting, um, what's that meme of the guy
Speaker 1: and he's like standing in front of like a board
Speaker 1: it's always sunny. Yes, it's always sunny in Philadelphia. I
Speaker 1: think that's it. And he looks kind of crazy but
Speaker 1: he's onto something like that's yeah. I kept getting images
Speaker 1: of that in my head. You know. One of the
Speaker 1: I guess again fun. One of the interesting things about
Speaker 1: crypto it because so much of it happens on chain,
Speaker 1: it does seem like there is this role for like
Speaker 1: the sort of like crazy Internet detective to sort of
Speaker 1: like this is so, this is Tether's wallet and this
Speaker 1: is el amede as wallet, and you can sort of
Speaker 1: do it for real because like people have always been
Speaker 1: trying to do that, but in crypto you actually can
Speaker 1: legitimately do that to some extent totally. Or you can
Speaker 1: also just point out the obviously insane things like naming
Speaker 1: your bank moon stone that cryptos going to the moon,
Speaker 1: and you can use it to get stoned. That's nuts, um.
Speaker 1: But the other thing I mean, I thought Bennett's explanation
Speaker 1: of the whole thing was fantastically impressive, in particular the
Speaker 1: way he laid out the sort of relationship between the
Speaker 1: market makers slash arbitrage ers and the messy process and
Speaker 1: this idea that well, in theory it really shouldn't be
Speaker 1: this messy, but it is in practice, which kind of
Speaker 1: suggests are points to future vulnerabilities, you would think. But
Speaker 1: that said, I also think, you know, just going back
Speaker 1: to this idea of why tether has so far proven
Speaker 1: relatively resilient, Like, I also think there is this overarching
Speaker 1: theme of I liquidity, right, and if people just like
Speaker 1: aren't transacting with it as much, then it can stay
Speaker 1: at one for far longer than you might expect. And
Speaker 1: this idea that you know, the a lot of interesting
Speaker 1: stuff on that question too, because like, even if you
Speaker 1: were to take the attestation at face vailue. You know,
Speaker 1: like a lot of assets have declined a lot in failure,
Speaker 1: including treasuries and including like anything that has any sort
Speaker 1: of credit element over the Chinese commercial paper. I mean,
Speaker 1: like everything is sort of we're there, But then ben
Speaker 1: Atts point maybe there's some Tether's out there that will
Speaker 1: never be redeemed and that creates some sort of buffer.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it is very interesting. You know. Another
Speaker 1: thing is that like and that sort of makes the
Speaker 1: persistence of tether as this important vehicle. I mean he
Speaker 1: mentioned that Tether's dominance within crypto, within de fire within
Speaker 1: crypto has gone down, it's still bigger than USDC by
Speaker 1: a substantial margin according to corner Coin market cap sion
Speaker 1: verse forty three billion, So it's still I mean, it's
Speaker 1: still really big. Um. But you know, there's also all
Speaker 1: this everyone knows, like there's all this scrutiny over it,
Speaker 1: and they have been sued, etcetera. So the persistence of
Speaker 1: tether is still just like in itself, like a fascinating story. Absolutely. Um.
Speaker 1: So I guess we will. We'll see how how long
Speaker 1: it goes on for U see how long it's share?
Speaker 1: Shall we leave it there? Let's leave it there all right.
Speaker 1: This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe Why Isn't Thal? You can
Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter at the Stalwart. Follow our guest
Speaker 1: Bennett Tomlin. He's at Bennett Tomlin. Follow our producer Carmen
Speaker 1: Rodriguez at Carmen armand, as well as Dash Bennett at dashbot.
Speaker 1: And check out all of the podcasts at Bloomberg under
Speaker 1: the handle at podcasts and some other housekeeping. We're gonna
Speaker 1: be doing an a M A episode where you, the listener,
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