Crypto mega-billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried says he bought billions of loins in order to exchange for other coins

• FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried revealed in a recent Bloomberg report that he has bought billions of fasteners.

• “If you are a crypto company, the banks are nervous about working with you,” he said.

• Other crypto traders who spoke to Bloomberg described the use of the tether as an intermediary currency as indeed an industry standard.

FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried recently revealed that he bought billions of ties to help trade other cryptocurrencies, according to a stablecoin article in Bloomberg Businessweek.

Interviewed at a sold-out bitcoin conference in Miami in June, Bankman-Fried told Bloomberg that trading with tether, the largest of the dollar-indexed stablecoins, had a key advantage over use. of dollars.

“If you are a crypto company, the banks are nervous about working with you,” he said.

The biggest advantage of Tether for crypto exchanges, as Bankman-Fried has hinted, is its ease of use. Instead of converting crypto into dollars – which could raise problems for banks who fear facilitating money laundering – holding a stable coin as a tether basically preserves the same value while making it easier to explore. of crypto.

Other crypto traders who spoke with Bloomberg described the use of tether as an intermediate currency as an industry standard, despite deep reservations about whether stablecoin is really backed by dollars. Some of these tether users even harbored conspiracy theories: it is a back door of the CIA for dirty money, or a government ploy to track down criminals.

As tether scrutiny intensified, with the DOJ continuing a bank fraud investigation against tether executives for past behavior, Bankman-Fried has maintained his footing by listing the tether on FTX. In August, he said his exchange would not treat stablecoin any differently.

“Tether is a cryptocurrency that can be on FTX just like any other cryptocurrency,” he told CNBC. “It’s not treated exactly like a dollar on FTX. It’s floating crypto.”

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“It’s not an integral part of our USD basket, which means the exchange doesn’t necessarily treat it as one-to-one with US dollars. That’s up to the market and users to determine,” Bankman said. -Fried.

Following this interview with CNBC, the 29-year-old crypto-billionaire expressed some frustration with the media’s focus on Tether’s legal issues.

“Eh only 20% of the interview was about USDT, I’ll take that as a win,” he said. tweeted.

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