Investors claim Tether’s $118B reserves may face audit and liquidity risks

Investors claim Tether’s $118B reserves may face audit and liquidity risks

Tether’s lack of third-party audits is raising investor concerns about a potential FTX-like liquidity crisis from the $118 billion stablecoin giant.

Investor concerns are mounting around Tether, the issuer of the world’s largest stablecoin USD₮.

Cyber Capital founder Justin Bons, who shared his concerns about Tether being a potentially bigger scam than FTX, catalyzed the latest wave of concerns.

Bons wrote in a Sept. 14 X post:

“[Tether is] one of the biggest existential threats to crypto as a whole. As we have to trust they hold $118B in collateral without proof! Even after the CFTC fined Tether for lying about their reserves in 2021.”

In 2021, the United States Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) fined Tether a $41 million civil monetary penalty for lying about USDT being fully backed by reserves.

Concerns over the stablecoin giant’s influence over the crypto space grew louder recently after data revealed that Tether’s market share surpassed 75% of the entire stablecoin market after a 20% increase over the past two years.

A hypothetical Tether implosion would be banking-driven, unlike the FTX collapse

Part of the concerns are fueled by one of the industry’s most notorious black swan events, the collapse of the FTX exchange, which led to $8.9 billion in lost user funds.

While FTX’s collapse was due to its inability to honor mass customer withdrawals of $6 billion within three days, a hypothetical Tether implosion would be related to its banking partners, according to Sean Lee, the co-founder of IDA Finance.

Lee told Cointelegraph:

“Bear market or not, the possibility of Tether imploding is more about its structural connectivity to its underlying assets and banking rails, not so much market movement.  Otherwise, USDT would’ve suffered during the last bear market, but instead, it was actually [USD Coin] USDC that depegged due to their reliance on Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.”

In May 2022, Tether honored over $16.7 billion worth of USDT customer withdrawals within 10 days without any issues.

In contrast, Washington Mutual Bank could not honor $16.5 billion worth of withdrawals within 10 days, which led to what became known as the biggest banking failure in the US in September 2008.

Others believe that Tether is too big to fail. Notably, Anndy Lian, author and intergovernmental blockchain expert, doesn’t expect Tether to face issues but warned that generally, large centralized entities could pose a risk for the cryptocurrency space:

“Cryptocurrencies were originally designed to operate without central control, promoting transparency, security, and user autonomy. However, Tether, as a centralized stablecoin issuer, holds significant influence over the crypto market due to its widespread use for trading and liquidity.”

Cointelegraph has approached Tether for comment.

Tether’s business structure and transparency raise concerns

On Sept. 8, Tether invested $100 million in Adecoagro, acquiring a 9.8% stake in the Latin American agricultural giant.

This latest investment gave us the first disclosure into Tether’s governance structure, according to Cyber Capital’s Bons, who wrote:

“The board of Tether Holdings only has 2 members; Giancarlo & Ludovicos. This implies that the USDT reserves are still not segregated in 2024 & these two have absolute control!”

IDA Finance’s co-founder, Lee, was also concerned about Tether’s lack of transparency. He wrote:

“Tether is structured as a business and their insistence on not providing the level of detailed transparency that ensures real trust from the community and institutional players is indeed concerning.”

Despite Tether boasting over $118 billion worth of reserves in its second quarter “independent attestations conducted by BDO,” Cyber Capital’s Bons claims that Tether has yet to submit its reserves for a third-party audit:

“However, an ‘Auditor’s Report’ or an ‘Accountant Report’ is not a formal audit at all! Despite the claims, Tether has never submitted its alleged reserves to a real unrestricted, third-party audit!”

 

Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/tether-transparency-business-structure-118b-ftx-concern

Anndy Lian is an early blockchain adopter and experienced serial entrepreneur who is known for his work in the government sector. He is a best selling book author- “NFT: From Zero to Hero” and “Blockchain Revolution 2030”.

Currently, he is appointed as the Chief Digital Advisor at Mongolia Productivity Organization, championing national digitization. Prior to his current appointments, he was the Chairman of BigONE Exchange, a global top 30 ranked crypto spot exchange and was also the Advisory Board Member for Hyundai DAC, the blockchain arm of South Korea’s largest car manufacturer Hyundai Motor Group. Lian played a pivotal role as the Blockchain Advisor for Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), an intergovernmental organization committed to improving productivity in the Asia-Pacific region.

An avid supporter of incubating start-ups, Anndy has also been a private investor for the past eight years. With a growth investment mindset, Anndy strategically demonstrates this in the companies he chooses to be involved with. He believes that what he is doing through blockchain technology currently will revolutionise and redefine traditional businesses. He also believes that the blockchain industry has to be “redecentralised”.

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Liquidity crunch may loom for Bored Ape-collateralized loans as floor price slides

Liquidity crunch may loom for Bored Ape-collateralized loans as floor price slides

Not every NFT collection is facing the same issue, but due to the collection’s outsized influence it could have a significant impact on the rest of the Ethereum NFT ecosystem.

The floor price for Bored Ape Yacht Club non-fungible tokens, a leader among NFT collections, has fallen to an eight-month low, raising the risk that dozens of the NFTs used as collateral for decentralized lending service BendDAO may be forcibly sold.

That scenario could then trigger a cascade of further liquidations, said Anndy Lian, author of the new book NFT: From Zero to Hero, in an interview with Forkast.

BendDAO is a peer-to-peer platform that allows users to front NFTs as collateral for Ethereum loans for roughly 30% to 40% of the NFTs floor price — or the minimum price to purchase one of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs on the open market.

Currently, 121 of the 227 Bored Apes collateralized on BendDAO — 2.27% of the entire collection — are considered to be at risk of liquidation as the collection’s floor price nears the level at which the tokens are valued on the platform.

With Bored Apes the second highest-selling NFT collection, Lian said a liquidation of this size would only put further downward pressure on the collection itself, others on the network, and even on the price of Ethereum itself. Combined with existing macro-economic pressure likely facing the crypto market this year, that could spell more grief for investors.

“That downstream issue [could] then create a really, really bad winter for everyone else next year,” he added.

Sick apes

BendDAO rates the risk level of a collateralized NFT via a so-called “health factor,” which is a ratio of the individual NFT’s value compared to the collection’s floor price. When that metric falls below 1, the token is automatically entered into a liquidity state for 48-hours to give the owner the chance to pay off the loan and interest to earn the token back or place it up for auction.

In response to the liquidation threat, BendDAO said Monday in a blog post they would be adjusting the liquidation threshold for these assets to 70% of the floor price by Sept. 20 over four stages with the first adjustment to 85% taking place on Aug. 30.

They also said they would be shortening the auction period to just 4 hours to improve liquidity for auctions.

“We are sorry that we underestimated how illiquid NFTs could be in a bear market when setting the initial parameters,” the BendDAO blog post read. “In the past several days, we got tons of feedback and suggestions from the community.”

The BAYC collection’s current floor price of 68.48 Eth marks a 55% plunge from a high in early May of 153 Eth, which Lian attributes to two main factors.

Merge factor

“Number one is that the overall market is not in the best condition,” he said. “Number two is there are still people with doubts on Ethereum 2.0. This adds some anxiety to people who are holding onto NFTs and using it as a collateral.”

Ethereum 2.0, usually referred to as “the Merge”, will involve the world’s second-largest blockchain mainnet transitioning from its current proof-of-work consensus mechanism to a proof-of-stake system. This change will make the network vastly more energy efficient, but will make Ether crypto miners effectively redundant, which has caused some miners to push back against the transition.

“It is actually a big concern for a lot of NFT speculators because the chances of them selling their NFT or BAYC at a certain high price is not going to come anytime soon,” Lian said of the sluggish sales figures.  “This is worrying.”

 

Original Source: https://forkast.news/liquidity-crunch-bored-ape-loan-floor-price/

Anndy Lian is an early blockchain adopter and experienced serial entrepreneur who is known for his work in the government sector. He is a best selling book author- “NFT: From Zero to Hero” and “Blockchain Revolution 2030”.

Currently, he is appointed as the Chief Digital Advisor at Mongolia Productivity Organization, championing national digitization. Prior to his current appointments, he was the Chairman of BigONE Exchange, a global top 30 ranked crypto spot exchange and was also the Advisory Board Member for Hyundai DAC, the blockchain arm of South Korea’s largest car manufacturer Hyundai Motor Group. Lian played a pivotal role as the Blockchain Advisor for Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), an intergovernmental organization committed to improving productivity in the Asia-Pacific region.

An avid supporter of incubating start-ups, Anndy has also been a private investor for the past eight years. With a growth investment mindset, Anndy strategically demonstrates this in the companies he chooses to be involved with. He believes that what he is doing through blockchain technology currently will revolutionise and redefine traditional businesses. He also believes that the blockchain industry has to be “redecentralised”.

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“Liquidity is one of the biggest key issue”

“Liquidity is one of the biggest key issue”

Thanks for the mention.

We spoke to Anndy Lian, during the Blockchain Week too and he highlighted that liquidity is one of the biggest key issue, there are plenty of issuances but no takers. During that interview, my fellow Cofounder Melody finds that his perspectives are a bit less positive so it was omitted from the interview. Now, after speaking to you, it seems like this is a big matter.”

Source: https://blockcast.cc/interviews/blockcast-cc-interviews-flovtec-founder-anton-golub-liquidity-the-killer-application-of-the-blockchain/

 

Anndy Lian is an early blockchain adopter and experienced serial entrepreneur who is known for his work in the government sector. He is a best selling book author- “NFT: From Zero to Hero” and “Blockchain Revolution 2030”.

Currently, he is appointed as the Chief Digital Advisor at Mongolia Productivity Organization, championing national digitization. Prior to his current appointments, he was the Chairman of BigONE Exchange, a global top 30 ranked crypto spot exchange and was also the Advisory Board Member for Hyundai DAC, the blockchain arm of South Korea’s largest car manufacturer Hyundai Motor Group. Lian played a pivotal role as the Blockchain Advisor for Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), an intergovernmental organization committed to improving productivity in the Asia-Pacific region.

An avid supporter of incubating start-ups, Anndy has also been a private investor for the past eight years. With a growth investment mindset, Anndy strategically demonstrates this in the companies he chooses to be involved with. He believes that what he is doing through blockchain technology currently will revolutionise and redefine traditional businesses. He also believes that the blockchain industry has to be “redecentralised”.

j j j