Mastodawn

"Britain’s drug gangs and Moscow’s hackers were just two nodes in a vast criminal super-network [that] included sanctioned oligarchs, Russian intelligence operatives and an Irish crime family."

(and of course that network also now includes the #Trump administration, because Howard Lutnick is/was Tether's money manager and Justin Sun is now the Trump family's business partner in #WorldLibertyFinancial)

* #TheEconomist: https://www.economist.com/1843/2025/07/04/how-tether-became-money-launderers-dream-currency
* no paywall: https://archive.ph/NiCRD

#moneylaundering #crime #corruption #crypto #cryptocurrency #iran #russia #uspol #howardLutnick #economist #economics #finance #uk #ukpol #garantex #threatintel #ransomware #cybersecurity #vladimirputin #oligarchs #putin #ukraine #kinahans #kinahan

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GhostOnTheHalfShell 2d ago

@cryptadamist

I don’t think it would be wrong to characterize this as global mafia, seizing the means of government. I know some people would just say same shit different day, but there are levels.

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Local Agency 2d ago

@cryptadamist one thing that struck me about tether is how it allows the admins of the coin to essentially mint money without having to go through the federal reserve.

IOW

USDT outstanding > Tether dollar reserves.

Which is a great place to be if you don't give a shit about your host currency.

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⚯ Michel de Cryptadamus ⚯2d ago

@laprice yes (and we know they printed money that at least a few times, when they got caught by NYS for lying about their reserves and then when they created a billion by lending $1 bn USDT to #CelsiusNetwork

unfortunately now donald trump can also print money outside the banking system with his personal stablecoin #USD1.

i suspect trump is even less likely than tether to be audited or scrutinized (and tether has never been audited).

#uspol #banking #uspolitics #trump #Celsius #tether #howardlutnick

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Local Agency 2d ago

@cryptadamist So illegal that they didn't have specific laws against it.

I'm still surprised the Biden admin didn't shut them down; but find it plausible that they didn't grasp the scale of threat and the scope of the enterprise.

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⚯ Michel de Cryptadamus ⚯2d ago

@laprice it's either that or, if you put on your tinfoil hat for a minute, they allowed tether to continue existing because it is useful for the CIA etc. to have a way to move money around secretly.

i know it sounds crazy but a) i've thought about this a *lot* and it's hard to think of any other reason something as malevolent as tether wasn't shut down and b) the recent mass seizure of iran's crypto assets lend some credence to this theory.

it wouldn't even be the first time - in the 1980s the CIA and terrorists were using the same drug cartel bank (BCCI) to move money around the world. BCCI resembles tether in a *lot* of way and managed to continue existing for a really long time until it blew up in a huge scandal (and BCCI became a bacryonym for "Bank of Crooks and Criminals")

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_Credit_and_Commerce_International