I had heard about this Tether blockchain platform in the past few days and the idea had quite caught my attention.
Then I came to this article from Coin Telegraph which shed some doubt about the project. The article also poses some problems concerning the Bitfinex Exchange.
It seems cautious to stay away from these Tether tokens and from Bitfinex as well. The problem would be finding another exchange to get some IOTs :-/
Here are some excerpts from the article:
Tether’s official website has a surprise hidden in its “legal” section:
“Once you have Tethers, you can trade them, keep them, or use them to pay persons that will accept your Tethers. However, Tethers are not money and are not monetary instruments. They are also not stored value or currency.There is no contractual right or other right or legal claim against us to redeem or exchange your Tethers for money. We do not guarantee any right of redemption or exchange of Tethers by us for money. There is no guarantee against losses when you buy, trade, sell, or redeem Tethers.”
Sister companies
It has long been known that Bitfinex and Tether are associated with each other. For instance, when Bitfinex’s banking at Wells Fargo was cut off, Tether joined Bitfinex’s lawsuit against the bank.
Tether assures users that:
“Every tether is always backed 1-to-1, by traditional currency held in our reserves. Our reserve holdings are published daily and subject to frequent professional audits.”
Despite this, the site gives no information about its auditor and does not make any audit reports available. Also, one wonders why bfx_drew boasts that Tether is currently undergoing an audit when, in the company’s own words, they are regularly audited. If in fact such audits are routine, why call special attention to this one?