Share this page!

Patrick McKenzie Profile picture
Twitter logo
7 Oct, 4 tweets, 1 min read
I am going to be seriously irked if Tether collapses and @Bitfinexed is described as a troll and not as “independent researcher who scooped every media outlet worldwide for years.”
Anyhow it’s a great writeup which adds relatively little to what cognoscenti know about the situation, other than an on-the-record expression of doubt by one of their bankers (!).
And the other one is, prudently, hedging and distancing themselves.
“[Tether] is practically quilted out of red flags” is a sentence I wish I had written first.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Patrick McKenzie

Patrick McKenzie Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @patio11

Patrick McKenzie Profile picture
8 Oct
Got a “Happy 21st year anniversary” message from my first bank account, which a) I feel old, b) goodness am I a bit of a pack rat for bank accounts, c) you have to love the LTV versus CAC math that makes a bank happily open accounts for kids with $20 in expectation of this email.
In “could have come directly out of a strategy presentation” my mom called the university I was going to attend, asked them who ran the campus branch, and then drove me to their local branch to open an account so that I’d be able to deposit work study checks.
And so that’s how I chose which business card I started using ~7 years later and which currency desk to rip my eyes out on buying yen for dollars in those dark days pre-TransferWise.
Read 7 tweets
Patrick McKenzie Profile picture
8 Oct
Kind of want to update my Tether post for the 2 year anniversary: kalzumeus.com/2019/10/28/tet…

The short version would have to be "The skeptics have been vindicated left and right but there's something like $60 billion more Tethers now."
I might or might not get around to it as I have a number of writing projects going through the pipeline now. (Which is good news! One will hopefully hit the Internets in the next week or two.)
Remember when this was a controversial assertion and the crypto community said "Nope nope this is a cash-and-carry business. We are believers in hard money here."

Now the line is "Oh pishposh we are grown-ups with prime brokerages. Capital efficiency, my good chap." Image
Read 8 tweets
Patrick McKenzie Profile picture
8 Oct
Worth reading both for a lucid explanation of Tether and for a great mental model (“senior and junior claims”) to import from finance into your worldview. (It is also extremely extremely applicable to engineering compensation among other things.)
Employees have de facto a (relatively small) senior claim to cash in their employer’s bank account AND a (hopefully larger) junior claim on enterprise value, via equity.

That junior claim is junior claim among junior claims, due to the preferred/common structure, until success.
By law and custom, a company crashing will attempt to satisfy payroll first.

Which tends to be a lot less than employees were *counting on* but the feature of being paid what one *is owed* is a notable one in case of business failure!
Read 6 tweets
Patrick McKenzie Profile picture
7 Oct
Who could possibly have seen that coming.
One great social ability for large media orgs which independent journalists don’t have: they can email you a pointed question and, if you don’t answer it, your non-answer will be treated as an answer by everyone that matters, and so you straight-up disclose unfavorable facts.
And so Bloomberg, arriving to the story (it has to be said!) several years late, called up the plausible Tether contras and asked something rhyming with “It’s been alleged that Tether loans out tethers to contras. Have you borrowed tether? Have you borrowed more than a billion?”
Read 6 tweets
Patrick McKenzie Profile picture
6 Oct
A fun work story which hits a lot of geeky interests at once, and some brief notes about it: stripe.com/newsroom/stori…

Shueisha, one of largest publishers in the world, used Stripe to sell gallery-grade manga prints direct to consumers globally.
One of the most striking graphs I’ve ever seen is the international popularity and country of origin of various characters. The U.S. dominates the top 50 slots (Disney, Hollywood, etc) but Japan punches far above its weight, entirely due to the anime/manga/games industries.
These all started as mass market entertainment, but many manga fans have grown up over the years and now have disposable income, and so Shueisha thought to do a more high-art project to fill the market need.
Read 10 tweets
Patrick McKenzie Profile picture
6 Oct
Individually: choose to do something where you can be Right Side Energy as much as possible. Which sometimes means choosing to bring Right Side Energy to whatever it is you happen to be doing.

Societally, make same possible for as many people as possible.
It’s painful how many institutions are designed not just to be oblivious to Right Side Energy but to either a) assume it is something that doesn’t exist in world or b) treat it as actively suspicious and have people whose literal jobs it is to stamp it out.
I’ll observe that I’ve been both left and right sides during my career and probably both within most single jobs I’ve had.
Read 5 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @patio11 has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @patio11!

Read all threads by @patio11

:(