86% of Stablecoin Issuer Tether Was Controlled By 4 People As of 2018: WSJ

Four men owned 86% of Tether as of 2018, according to investigatory documents viewed by the Wall Street Journal. CoinDesk reports: The documents from 2021 probes of Tether by the New York Attorney General and the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission reveal the previously unknown ownership structure of the secretive issuer of the world's largest stablecoin. Tether's USDT stablecoin is a key piece of infrastructure in the crypto world, easing the movement of money in the industry. Yet, the people behind it have not always been forthcoming about how they operate.

Tether began from separate companies led by ex-plastic surgeon Giancarlo Devasini and former child actor Brock Pierce. Devasini, who helped develop crypto exchange Bitfinex and is now its chief financial officer, owned about 43% of Tether in 2018, according to the documents seen by the Journal. Two other executives of both Bitfinex and Tether, CEO Jean-Louis van Der Velde and Chief Counsel Stuart Hoegner, each owned roughly 15% of Tether in 2018, the documents revealed. The fourth major owner as of 2018 was a businessman with British and Thai citizenship known as Christopher Harborne in the U.K. and Chakrit Sakunkrit in Thailand. He controlled about 13% of Tether. Together, the four men owned approximately 86% of Tether through their own holdings and another related company.

I'm shocked

[istartedi]

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you to see that laissez-faire capitalism leads to the formation of oligarchy [wikipedia.org].

Re:

[istartedi]

I don't get that reference, and the only thing I can find with a quick googling is a 4chan "copypasta" that seems to describe some kind of rape scene and doesn't bear repeating.

Re:

[rmdingler]

I'm not certain if shocked describes the temperature of the room, but if cryptocurrency keeps getting this type of negative press release, the whole lot of it is in water that's hot.

What are PT Barnum's favorite people going to buy then? Damn!

Re:

[cellocgw]

I'm not certain if shocked describes the temperature of the room

Please Google "Casablanca" .
Kids these days....

Re: I'm shocked

[reanjr]

Tether was never intended to be decentralized. It seems like you think you did a "gotcha".

Re: I'm shocked

[Goatbot]

It was touted in its early days as an easy method of payment for IT services. Basically allowing you to work in many different places and avoid hassle of taxes and regulations between countries. I know many folks that are very vested since their paychecks are locked in.

The grand master plan of crypto

[Anonymous Coward]

The plan for all cryptocurrencies isn't what they want to make you think it is. It's more sinister than the egalitarian image the crypto boys portray for it.

After the 2008 financial meltdown, cryptocurrencies were born out of it, declared to be the means by which people could be freed from banks/governments, and promised to avoid any such future meltdowns from happening ever again.

But the crypto boys watched closely the result of that meltdown, and formulated their plan: create a new form of currency, and for it a new financial system detached from traditional ones (those burdened by "governments and regulations") - they called it "DeFi" for "Decentralized Finance", but its dirty little secret is that it's really "Deregulated Finance".

Their plan is to make this new money be adopted by the masses, so they start it off with a low price, then gradually increase it, by virtue of them just pulling numbers out of thin air for its value, until it catches the attention of the masses - then it gets more and more "valuable" from the collective faith of its given value ("network effect"), until traditional institutions and the typical "1%" billionaires start to notice and, greedy as they are, want in on the action too.

So now those that got in at the ground floor have gained all this "value" out of thin air, and once they're ready, they'll pull out all pretty much at once - that it'll create a sell-off panic, and a new meltdown is born! And because of their "De[regulated]Fi" system, the bros have already shifted all the risks away from themselves onto others, so they'll make out like bandits, leaving everyone else to "hodl" the bag.

But the bros were really observant about that last meltdown - and noticed all the "bailouts" the big banks got - so as they were shifting the risks to others, they increased their investments into what would get the next bailouts - so in the end they'll make out like bandits twice: the first time from suckering everyone else into their pump-and-dump scam, and again once they benefit from the bailouts that'll get handed out.

And there you have it folks, the real master plan of crypto.

--
"Those who fail to accept it will mod the truth down to -1." -Prof. Feynman

$DJED/$SHEN

[ttspttsp]

It's algorithmic (not collateralized), so that's scary. But, it's over-allocated, and the algorithm is published (open, governed by smart-contract). I think it's worth a look [cryptoglobe.com].

Re:

[DrMrLordX]

Huh, that's interesting. USDT was supposed to be fully-collateralized. When did they change that?

Not surprising

[DrMrLordX]

Tether, Ltd. was never a large operation when it spun off from Bitfinex. And it requires very little human effort to maintain.

But it’s totally

[hdyoung]

“STABLE”

Paywalled Article

[bkmoore]

The article is paywalled, so difficult to comment intelligently. But off hand, if you have a stable coin that has a peg to a real-world currency, then why would 86% be in the hands of only four people? Do those four people have enough personal collateral to maintain the peg? Otherwise anyone could come up with their own "stable coin", mint a few million, call themself a millionaire, buy expensive homes, cars, and make over-the-top TikTok videos that would put Paris Hilton to shame, maybe even get a few celebrity endorsements before unloading on retail investors (I mean suckers...). oh wait, that's all been done before. I'm not even 50, but I think I'm way too old for this crypto Ponzi fad.

So it wasn't decentralized as advertised?

[thesjaakspoiler]

Can we start a class action suit now?
I own 2 Tetters.

So?

[Vranitzky]

Bah.. Who cares about crypto shit? Whoever "invested" in them is an idiot and deserves any shit they get. We should just stop talking about them and let the losers lose. They will fall for the next ponzi scheme anyhow, so tough luck.

Stablecoin?

[Petersko]

I'm not letting my kid sleep over at the house of somebody who introduces himself as "Not A Pedophile".

Well, at least...

[null etc.]

At least crypto is not centralized!

A researcher checked the recent Bitcoin jump

[rsilvergun]

and you'll all be shocked that it looks like market manipulation. The way it works is an individual or small group of them ("whales") agrees to maintain a price floor. e.g. they make sure BTC doesn't fall below, say, $16k. This attracts speculators who think they've found a "safe" investment and those speculators run up the price to, say, $17k. The Whales then sell at the new price point in small enough increments to make back their money without crashing the market. This causes the "floor" to rise up to th