Thursday, March 14, 2019

Back to fractional reserves 🙃

March 14, 2019

New Drama Errupts After Tether Discreetly Updates Reserve Definition

For years the stablecoin Tether (USDT) has tirelessly defended its reserves as it claimed each USDT was backed 1:1 by one U.S. dollar in holding. This gave Tether its dollar peg.

But now, Tether is moving away from that model and moving to a model much more traditional - a fractional reserve system.

Tether made no announcement to accompany the change, rather they discreetly updated their website to read:

"Every tether is always 100% backed by our reserves, which include traditional currency and cash equivalents and, from time to time, may include other assets and receivables from loans made by Tether to third parties, which may include affiliated entities (collectively, "reserves"). Every tether is also 1-to-1 pegged to the dollar, so 1 USD₮ is always valued by Tether at 1 USD."

Back to square one

One Reddit comment sparked a thread on the forum saying:

"I guess we're back to trusting 3rd parties, running fractional reserves, to run the market."

That's far from the promise that Tether use to keep - even if loosely held.

To make matters worse, the Redditor pointed out that the "Proof of Funds" link on Tether's website leads to a dead page that hasn't been updated since June 2018.

Tether's stink

Despite having a consistent stink in the community about whether Tether is fraudulent or not, it still maintains it's seat as the largest stablecoin.

But that seat won't last long. According to The Block, late last year, Tether's market share of stablecoins had diminished from 98% to 73% in just 3 months.

Now, as better regulated stablecoins are gaining traction and adoption, Tether needs to clear its reputation to compete.

Here's a clue: A discreet website update is not it.

ADOPTION

The New York Times Briefly Posted a Blockchain Job Opening

With over 4 million paid readers, the New York Times is one of the oldest media businesses still running today.

But it's old age won't stop the giant from testing new tech. According to CoinDesk, NYT posted a new job opening titled "Lead, Blockchain Exploration."

The opening has since been taken down for reasons unknown but CoinDesk still nabbed the job's details.

Here's what we know

The NYT is looking for an applicant to "help envision and design a blockchain-based proof of concept for news publishers" within the research and development division.

Some accompanying details:

Temporary job that will last 12 months
Responsibility for brand development
8+ years of experience in leading engineers, designers and journalist

We don't know fully what NYT has in mind for the project's direction but at minimum, we know the interest is there.

EXCHANGE

Coinbase Pro Adds Stellar, 22 More to Go

Announced Wednesday, Coinbase Pro is beginning the process of adding Stellar (XLM) to its platform.

The process will start with deposits only, then will eventually roll out trading once the order books are set.

22 more to go

Back in December, Coinbase Pro identified 31 different digital assets that it was looking to add to its platform.

Since then, 9 assets have been added including:

Civic
District0x
Loom Network
Decentraland
XRP
Dai
Golem Network
Zilliqa
Stellar

BITS

But wait, there's more...

💻 IBM published a patent for resisting replay attacks.
🤓 Privacy cryptocurrency Grin has voted to onboard a third full-time developer.
🚀 Nasdaq-powered EU exchange DX.Exchange is launching security token trading in an industry first.

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