Quote from: Samarkand on January 23, 2018, 03:23:50 PM

Why would exchange rate volatility make that impossible to maintain? After all issued Tethers
are never redeemed - otherwise we would have seen the numbers on the transparency page
go down at some point - and therefore it is irrelevant if the basket of cryptocurrencies would
drop below the issued amount.
That this could be a problem in the long-term is obvious.

Exactly that.

Quote from: Samarkand on January 23, 2018, 03:23:50 PM

Regarding the Friedman document I already outlined several possibilities:
-Bitfinex could have provided the necessary funds for the Tether audit from funds of the Bitfinex exchange
-rich individuals could have provided the necessary funds for the snapshot date
-banks could have provided the liquiditiy for the audit

We already had this discussion and I fully explained why that couldn't have happened. Do you want to revisit those posts?

Quote from: Samarkand on January 23, 2018, 03:23:50 PM

-Tether is completely genuine and all Tethers are 100 % backed by actual fiat deposits (I admit that this is
also possible, but unlikely if mayax and I are correct)
...

In my opinion that is by far the most likely explanation.

Quote from: Samarkand on January 23, 2018, 03:23:50 PM

There are a myriad of possibilities how they could have got the necessary funds for a short
period of time in order to prove their solvency for the snapshot date. After all they run one
of the biggest exchanges in the world and definitely have
good connections. The document was worded very carefully and leaves a lot of room
for interpretation.

As I recall it wasn't at all ambiguous and I quoted the lines from the report that you missed explaining that they had reconciled the bank statements and received full explanations from Tether what every entry was. (What accountants call auditing).

Quote from: Samarkand on January 23, 2018, 03:23:50 PM

Regarding your question:
-Bittrex allows fiat deposits for amounts that exceed 100k $, but only credits USDT to your account if you wire actual USD to them (you probably knew this)
-Binance has no fiat deposits
-Poloniex has no fiat deposits
-Huobi has no fiat deposits since the crackdown of the Chinese government
-OKEx I have no idea, but it should be similar to Huobi

OKEx did because they had the same issues receiving international wires as Tether did due to the Taiwanese banking system.
So, in summary, I would guess that the vast majority of Tethers funds are coming from Bitfinex and Bittrex customers deposits.

Quote from: Samarkand on January 23, 2018, 03:23:50 PM

I also have a question for you. Why would Tether start to issue USDT on Ethereum in
addition to issuances on OMNI?

Not sure, maybe it's trendy and they like playing with virtual kittens?