 Welcome to Digital Asset News to get top stories in crypto and bring them on a bite-sized piece. As today, just like the thumbnail suggests, we have to ask the question, is Tether a fraud? And really the big question is not only is it a fraud, but what would happen if it actually came to light that Tether wasn't backed up by anything? So we're going to take a look at a pretty great article from ZeroHedge called What Effect Would Tether Be a Complete Fraud Have on Crypto? So hopefully this will ease some people's fears. On top of that, we're also going to take a look at what's going on with Amazon as crypto and reports that Amazon definitely lining up Bitcoin payments and token confirms an insider. So we'll take a look at what is going on there and also take a look at a couple of other things. But first, let's take a look at what's going on into the market. So today it is Sunday, I think it's a 26th of July or something around there. And hey, market cap is $1.4 trillion. Bitcoin is almost at $34,000, almost $35,000, $34,590. So that's looking pretty good. And everything's up just a little bit for the day. On Sundays, usually those were the dump days. But today, it seems like it was a pretty good day. Bears had their fun. Bulls had their fun. Everybody's having a great time. Great. I'm just glad it wasn't just a Sunday dump. Usually, we saw it on the weekends. But now it seems like a Monday or a Tuesday is the most relevant time. So we will see what happens. But for this weekend, hey, we're almost at $1.5 trillion and I'm pretty happy. So that's what's going on in the market essentially. Let's just take a look at what's going on in the macro level, what's happening, and more specifically, what's going on with Tether. But before we do that, I just want to talk about a quick couple of follow-ups of some stories that we just did just a couple of days ago. And the first story was this was from Fridays. And it was talking about crypto pushback, banks, regulations, and investors. And there was a story that we covered where in El Salvador, there was a bunch of different protesters coming about. And they were protesting Bitcoin. And I said in that story, I said, look, you have to take it with a grain of salt because these types of news articles, it's all for clicks. And it's all for sensationalism. So when you see something like this going around, you're like, is this really the truth? And what really threw me was the actual verbiage that they used. And it was the same type of wording that you would hear from the banks, from politicians, from IMF, that Bitcoin was destructive and it was being used for nefarious purposes. And it was really not great for the country. And so I'm like, well, okay. But I covered it anyhow, because I just wanted to cover things. And as things have come to light, and I asked people in the comments that go, show me that this is actually going on in El Salvador. If you're from El Salvador, show me what's going on. And these were the pictures that we have right here. And you can see it says, la le Bitcoin, Bitcoin Law is whatever. And then a couple of different things where it shows like it might be a big group of people. However, I found this, someone sent this to me on Twitter, Bitcoin Beach, this is actually the protest. So as you can see, not too big. And that's what's going on. Again, sensationalism. And I like how it says here, yes, the reports of protests against Bitcoin and El Salvador, we're real. I believe 100 news reports and 10 actual protesters. That's pretty funny. So that is the first one. And the second one, we covered a story about what is going on with BlockFi. We've seen four different states come out against them and say, hey, we're going to send you a cease and desist letter because we think that you're dabbling in securities. And we took a look at the terms of service for Celsius in terms of service for BlockFi. There's a couple of discrepancies in there. And really, what it really came down to was Alex Moshinsky was actually on CNBC. And he actually answered this question quite well. And lights have Alex in the show at some point to talk about it. Alex is a busy guy. He's been on the show for a couple of times. But this is him just really putting that whole thing to rest. So there was two questions here. And the first one was, and it was a great question, is how does Celsius produce yield? How does that work? Because 9% for a stablecoin seems kind of crazy, considering that the banks give me a whopping 0.002%. And I'll probably retire on that. So Alex answers that pretty well. And then she asks him, so what do you think about this BlockFi and how do you differ from it? Because if they're shutting down their operation or having cease and desist letters for gaining interest on Bitcoin, don't you do the same? And aren't you worried that's going to happen to you? And just listen to what Alex says here. So Celsius created this category back in 2018. Now there's probably close to 50 companies offering that, including Coinbase and others. Yield is all around us, right? Basically, there's always somebody who needs to borrow the asset, Bitcoin or Ethereum or stablecoin, and they're willing to pay a higher rate. Celsius just gives most of that back to our users, to the people who have lent those assets in the first place. Yesterday, New Jersey cracked down on BlockFi. I don't know if you would consider yourselves exactly the same, but here's what they said. I wonder if it would apply to using a platform like Celsius. They issued a cease and desist order against BlockFi, which is headquartered in New Jersey, saying they can no longer sell unregistered securities in the form of interest earning cryptocurrency accounts. The regulators also warned other DeepFi platforms saying they quote, present a heightened risk of loss to investors but aren't protected like the FDIC for bank insurance or the SIPC as with brokerage accounts. Wouldn't this kind of regulatory crackdown apply to Celsius at some point? Well, so we are not in the business of selling you coins. We don't try to sell you Bitcoin or Ethereum or stablecoin. Our job is just to earn yield on assets you already have. So we also work closely with regulators all over the world. We've been around longer than all these companies you're talking about. And I think we're fully compliant, but we do everything we need to do to stay compliant in all the jurisdictions we operate. We operate in over 170 countries worldwide. We manage over 15 billion in assets. So we're not just the fly-by-night company that started yesterday. And you mentioned before this segment, you mentioned Core Scientific. Celsius is one of the large investors in Core Scientific. We are one of the large miners in North America. So we also create yield by effectively mining Bitcoin and by creating Bitcoin or minting Bitcoin right out of the blockchain. So our diverse sources of yield are very different than what BlockFi or other people do. They're relying on securities to create some of their yield, which is very different than what Celsius does. First of all, that was pretty funny. Nice little jab at BlockFi. We're on a fly-by-night company. We're the real deal. That's pretty good. So anyhow, hopefully that clears it up for you. And I like the way Alex answered those questions. So let me know what you think about that in the comments section. Is Celsius on that ridgeline? Or do you think they're totally different from BlockFi? Did he explain it adequately? I think he did a pretty good job. Anyhow, let's go into today's top story, which is Tether and Fraud. I keep getting this question again and again. And I keep saying I really don't care. And I mean, really I should care. And kind of. But let's just get in the story, shall we? So if you don't know, Tether is a stable coin, right? Tether, really what it says right here, should equal a dollar. It's one Tether for $1. Tether is the third largest currency at $63 billion. And Tether receives USD from depositors and then mints a corresponding amount of USDT and puts that into their depositors account. So look, there is no mining of Tether. There is no proof of work of Tether. It's just you give them a dollar, they're going to mints it and then that's it. So for the $63 billion that is out there of Tether, they should have $63 billion in US dollars, which, you know, because it's okay for the US government to create stuff out of thin air, but it is not okay for anybody else to do it besides the government. And that's just how it is, folks. So that is essentially what Tether is. So really, it comes down to this. Nobody really knows for sure where these Tethers are coming from or what happens to the assets backing them from which they are ostensibly reserved. Nobody knows for sure if newly minted USDT has any backing at all. And there was a story, gosh, I want to say five or six months ago where they had an outside auditor from some Caribbean place, Barbados or someplace like that. But they did an audit and they said, yes, it is totally backed one to one. Well, that wasn't good enough and people are still scared. So okay, here we go. So digging deeper. This is what concerns people. Some of the key moments in crypto in 2021 are this. Tether starts out the year with $21 billion. By the time Bitcoin hits the all-time high in April, it's more than doubled to $46 billion. Bitcoin is also more than doubled to $64,000. So people are like, well, they think what's going on is that Tether is just being printed out of thin air and the people that own Tether, Tether Ltd, Tether LLC, Tether whatever, C Corp or S Corp, they're just minting it, buying Bitcoin, keeping Bitcoin and just printing Tether and not having anything backed up. And that is the concern. And it's a legitimate concern. I can totally see that. And then also, it's not only just Bitcoin, but if you read right here, it talks about Ethereum, the same thing happened. And it doubled, so did Tether and $4100. So in today's case, can $40 billion in Tether issuance, fraudulent or not, be solely responsible for a half trillion dollars in market cap in the case of Bitcoin and another, call it $390 billion in Ethereum over the course of the year? And that's the big thing that I've been harping on. No, it can't. Yes, it can inject a pretty great amount of liquidity into the system, but is it 100% responsible for it? No. So really what I think, what part of it is, retailers go in, they need Tether, they get Tether, they buy Bitcoin, everybody's happy. Is there some some craziness going on behind the scenes? I can't say there is and I don't want to be sued. But if I had to guess, and I'm just guessing because I have no idea, I would say that maybe not everything is on the up and up perfectly. Maybe it's like 90%, 10% that they actually have it. Maybe it's 80, 20, maybe it's 70, 30. I have no idea, honestly. But that's what the whole audit will have to come to. But do I believe that it is Tether is just printing totally and they're not getting any dollars whatsoever. And then as soon as it's discovered that, oh, no, they didn't do anything. It's going to crash the whole system. No, it's not. And if I could say that it's 100% fraudulent, I think that would be a huge stretch to go that route. Anyhow, to continue on. It still didn't prove that Tether issuance was causing Bitcoin's price increase. It was still possible that retail demand for Bitcoin was drying real USD in a Tether. Tether Limited was issuing Tethers in exchange for those dollars. And at those issue, Tethers were then being used by Bitcoin. Under that scenario, Tethers rise was being caused by Bitcoin's demand and Tether might be fully backed by dollars. And you know what? Let's hope so. But again, who knows how much of a percentage it actually is. It really comes down to, let's do an audit. That's really what it is. If a Tether crisis occurs, and this is the big thing, it would set off a cascading failure of DeFi applications as instruments collateralized in part by USDT would vaporize causing a chain reaction. Even larger liquidity shock would completely seize up the centralized exchanges, especially the ones with high levels of USDT reserves. So again, me personally, I don't use Tether. I use USDC almost all the time. If I have to, because I like to say Tether up, but it's kind of like going, well, I got to get an Uber even though I might just get a lift. It's just an expression. I use USDC. USDC is offered in Voyager. That's what I use a lot. So I just use USDC. And I don't see the problem because I mean, look, USDC by circle, it even has interest by Visa. Visa is picking up. So I mean, why would I just use USDC? I know people out there like, well, you don't understand, Rob, because USDT is the only thing. Well, here's the thing. Do you have to stay in US in Tether? Can't you get out a little bit? This is the question that I asked myself, especially for people like, well, maybe I could. Not all the time. But I think there's a problem with people who are in Tether and stay in Tether and they have their Tether on the exchanges. First of all, you shouldn't have everything on the exchanges. That is a big no-no. But I'm not here to tell anybody what to do. I'm just saying, this is what I do. Investment opinion, not investment advice. So to finish up, a Tether crisis won't kill cryptos. The crypto economy would take a hit. That's true. Possibly big. And it's going to rebuild itself and keep moving forward. Ironically, that will all happen without any bailouts or regulatory interventions. Everyone involved is going to take full ownership for their own losses. Imagine that. That's pretty funny. So let's talk about this. If Tether is a complete fraud, I do not believe in any way, shape, or form that you have 100% of everybody just printing Tether out of thin air without collecting any dollars whatsoever. They're pretending to mint a peg to fiat dollars, which are themselves backed by nothing and can be created at will and using to buy what cryptos. So it's all big cycle anyhow. So this is some pretty good advice here. And I have to agree here. So this is what you want to do defensively. Don't trade on margin, neither cryptos or stocks. Never leave your coins in exchange. Aside from speculative funds, avoid complex DeFi strategies that collateralize or rehypothecate your assets. Just ask Mark Cuban and Iron Finance. Don't hold any value in Tether. If you have to trade on USDT, get out of some exotic or thinly traded altcoin pair and get out and move to some other asset. If you have to make use of a stablecoin, use USDC or die. I don't see the problem. Like I know it's not everywhere, but you can get into it if you really want to and you know you can. And then avoid Bitfinex and Binance for different reasons. Binance is having problems and you know, I don't know if I agree with that. Binance could be a great thing. It could be a great solid exchange, but they've had a lot of problems, especially with the banks. And it's just because they're trying to do a lot of different things as far as like derivatives and synthetics and things like that. And the SECs already say we're not going to let that happen. You're going to go through us. They're not doing it. That's not for me. That's for lawyers. So in conclusion, I will just say this, I just don't, I know people are like super worried like they think like Tether's going to crash everything. There's been different videos about it. Look, I've been hearing that the great economic reset is going to happen and that gold is going to take over. I have heard that's going to be Mad Max, Thunderdome, craziness. And that's the only thing that that could be gold or silver. And that didn't happen. And then when I got in in 2017, I also heard that Bitcoin was going to a million. And guess what? That didn't happen. And then I also heard that Tether was going to crash everything. And guess what? That hasn't happened. Now, could it happen? No. I'm just going to say it. No, it's not going to crash the whole thing to zero. And then everything's going to get out. It's not going to happen. If it does happen, yes, we'll take a hit. We'll take a black eye. It's just like the big connect days. You know, people hit that. And yes, it's not as big as or it's probably bigger than a big connect. And people get frotted out. And people are going to lose. That's why I say, if you're worried about it right now, then get out of Tether. It's the same thing like when you want to put your money on onto Celsius and gain yield or Voyager and gain yield or Gemini and Gale yield, but you're like, well, I don't know because they're not my private keys. Then just don't do it. Then put it in cold storage. And that's it. So you have options. You are an adult. And just use your adult senses and do what you think is best for you and your family. I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just saying, just be cautious. That's all. All right. So let me know what you think about that in the comments section. Let's move on to our next piece where we get to talk about... Oh, actually, before I do that, I forgot to talk about this. There was some reserves done. Tether's Bank, Delta Exit, Stable Corner is fully backed by reserves. But the last one, this was just a couple of days ago. And this was Tether's General Council tell CNBC the audit is months away. This was on July 21st. And they went on, I believe it was CNBC, and the exchange was back and forth between them and the moderator. And they said, quick question just to follow up. I know you said you would be thrilled to be the first crypto company in Stable Corner to go through an audit. Do you have a date in mind? And Hunter says, we don't have this time, but we are reaching back a couple of years for financial audit. And it's in the process. Okay. Do you think it's years away? It's months. Only months? Sure. So like in my opinion, like if you've really, if you've been hounded this long for an audit and you haven't gotten it, there's probably something going on. That's all I'm going to tell you, right? When I got, when I got popped by the IRS, what four or five years ago, because they wanted to audit me, guess what? It all came through. Now I'm not a billionaire, but I was able to get a pretty darn quick. So to me, it just sounds fishy. I don't think it's going to break it, but I wouldn't be in tether. Simple as that. Let me know what you think in the comment section. Let's move on to a pretty interesting piece about Amazon and insiders. So this was from a friend of the show, James Bowwater over at CryptoAM. CryptoAM, if you don't know, if you're not from London, it's one of the biggest business publications that everybody reads over there apparently. I'm not from there. But yeah, and James is editor at large. And this was a story that he broke, I want to say yesterday. Oh, today. Pretty good. And there's been talk about this whole thing with Amazon posting for a blockchain and crypto expert. And to me, it was kind of just like the JP Morgan story where JP Morgan, the same thing, like we want to get a blockchain expert, but it didn't really reveal that they wanted to get into cryptocurrencies per se, just blockchain. And there's a big difference between getting the blockchain, that's what China is always talking about, and getting into cryptocurrencies. So like with this one, I found it quite interesting as an insider. And again, this is just an insider. This isn't somebody like Amazon's like, this is definitely happening. But when there's smoke, there's fire. So this is what's going on. So first of all, publishing a job advertisement for a crypto and blockchain lead, this was just happened last week, calls for someone who can leverage domain expertise in blockchain, distributed ledger, central bank digital currencies, and cryptocurrency. I like how James wrote this part. He says, it doesn't take a genius on the outside to deduce where Amazon might be going with recruitment. But according to an insider, the plans run much deeper than simply bringing someone on board to examine possibilities. This isn't just going through the emotions to set up crypto payment solutions at some point in the future. This is a full on well discussed integral part of the future mechanism of how Amazon will work. She told city AM. So this sounds pretty good so far. And just take it with a grain of salt. But it does look to be quite promising to finish up. She states, it begins with Bitcoin, it begins with Bitcoin. This is the key first stage of this crypto project. And the directive is coming from the very top. Jeff Bezos himself. The insider also explained that directors of the world's fourth largest company were keen to move towards taking off other big crypto. Once it had established a fast and secure method of Bitcoin payment. And this is where it gets pretty good. Because when we start talking about Bitcoin, we're like, well, that makes sense because everybody wants Bitcoin, right? They want to they want to hold it. They want to establish it. Maybe they want to just hold it for quite a long time, hopefully, like the car salesman and Tesla does and also SpaceX, apparently. So this is what she says. Ethereum, Cardano and Bitcoin Cash will be the next in line before they bring about eight of the most popular cryptos online. So for everybody who's a big fan of those, congratulations. Yours might be a part of Amazon. Now this could change just an insider, but who knows? I wonder why they picked those. Let me know what you think in the comment section of why they picked those cryptos themselves. And then lastly, this entire project is pretty much ready to roll. Bezos next plan would cause even greater intrigue. When all these crypto ducks are lined up, there's another twist to push things even further into Amazon's favor, a native token. This then becomes a multi-level infrastructure where you can pay for goods and services, our own tokens and a loyalty scheme. So look, that's pretty smart. If you think about it, right? If everybody uses, a lot of people use Amazon and with COVID that just came about, it really pushed everybody into that space because it didn't have to go to the store. They just ordered everything delivered. Everything was great. So I think that pushed up everything. Even Mr. Wonderful, Kevin O'Leary said that COVID-19 pushed their online business ahead by five to 10 years and just propelled everything. So I see if you want to have a loyalty program and you want to have your own cryptocurrency and you want people to spend it, then here you go. Now I personally am not going to be using Bitcoin to buy things on Amazon, but maybe some people will. However, I could see why people would probably use other cryptos like a Bitcoin Cash. Pretty easy, pretty fast to use. Cardano, sure. Ethereum, I don't know. Maybe XRP, maybe Stellar, who knows. But that's not for me to say. That's for Jeff Bezos. So let me know what you think about that in the comment section. And then I just want to finish up with a couple of two quick snippets where I talk about timestamps and moonboys. So here's what I got. I did a little poll a couple of days ago and I just asked everybody, do you use the timestamps in my YouTube videos? Because I got to be honest with you. I never, I personally don't use timestamps. I just watch a video and let it play. But apparently a lot of people do. And so far, in 24 hours, we've had 1500 votes and like 53% are like, yeah, I use all the time. Some, you know, a little bit, some say rarely and some say, what the heck is that? So I said, well, damn it, now I got to keep doing them. And then I will do them. I just didn't realize that people actually use the timestamps that religiously. So I will keep doing those types of things. And then lastly, I put out a tweet. I said, I think my channel would, and yes, I know I misspelled would, it's called autocorrect. But it was pretty funny though. I got a lot of like grammar Nazis. You know, what's expelled wrong? Yes, I know. But I can't change it when I tweet it. I think my channel would grow much faster if I just say that everything is going to the moon every day. And I just, I just had a tongue in cheek because I was perusing through my YouTube feed and I was like, man, everything's going to the moon. That's crazy. It's crazy. Look at that YouTube, moon, moon, moon, moon. And I was just kidding. And then I was like, don't do that. Don't, don't do it. If you do that, I will unsubscribe and unsubscribe. And there was, and I, there was some really good points here. And somebody said, like guy says here, he goes moon boy strategy only works in the short term and in a bull market, eventually one loses credibility and long term growth suffers. You're doing just fine, mate. Thanks, guy. And then double B your class, that guy. But then somebody said, I don't know if I can find it. Oh yeah, those who want to get quick, rich, quick, usually boom in the boom out. The great ones keep growing naturally. Don't worry, make the jump, make the jump in the pool. And that's another thing I, I promised to jump in the pool when I hit 500,000 subscribers, or if Bitcoin hits 100,000, whichever comes first. So I'll do that at some point. But one person said, I can't find it right now. They said, you have to understand that everybody who predicts moon every single day and every single time, they lose credibility over time. And they said, do you really want those types of people watching the channel? And then, you know, just assuming that everything's going to moon. And I was like, that's true. Nobody wants that. And it's, it's true. And I will say this, there's, there's a channel out there for everybody, right? Some people need that channel. They need that everything's going to the moon because they need to, to have that hope. And hopefully they evolve and they realize that there's these things called cycles, there's a bull market and a bear market. And things can always moon. But eventually, if you stick around for a while and you do the hard work and you do the hard things, but just dollar cost averaging and take your time, things usually work out pretty well. And just sometimes it just sucks. And it's been sucking for quite some time. And I'm hoping that we're on the mend and hopefully see some things. So I don't always give you, give you what you want. I just try to give you what you need. And that's about it. So look, first of all, if you stuck with me all the way to the end, I appreciate it. Thanks for sticking with me. If you like the type of video, give it a thumbs up. Also consider subscribing a lot of things we talk about on this channel are very time sensitive. Over on Dan clips, we do more of the advanced stuff and talk more about projects and things like that. So that's it for today. Thanks so much. I appreciate it. See you on the next one.