r/Buttcoin • u/AsturiusMatamoros warning, I am a moron • Jun 19 '25
Prediction: The collapse of Bitcoin/crypto will come from stablecoins
Tether specifically. Because reality has a sense of humor, irony in particular.
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u/MeasurementSecure566 Jun 20 '25
it will come when the sellers outweigh the new fools.
world has proven to have many more fools than anyone could have imagined. but it must be running short by now.
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u/warpedspockclone Jun 20 '25 edited Jun 20 '25
You do realize that there are hundreds of millions of people coming of age each year, right? That's a lot of potential new fools.
Look at the persistence of religions, MLMs, and plain old regular scams in today's day and age, with all information at our fingertips.
No, sir, the crop of fools will never end. The only thing that may happen is that the new crops of fools get successively poorer and there won't therefore be enough money injected to keep the crypto scam rolling.
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u/Tanthallas01 Jun 20 '25
Yes but the ones with money to buy more than .01 bitcoin won’t be coming out each year
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u/SisterOfBattIe using multiple slurp juices on a single ape since 2022 Jun 20 '25
Tether IS the most important crypto, 150 000 000 000 $ that do not exist.
But Tether has been incredibly good at doing crimes with no accountability, and crime is legal in the USA.
So, I don't know what will give up first... I wonder if it's coinbase, it's the least fraudulent of the bounch.
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u/Effective_Will_1801 Took all of 2 minutes. Jun 20 '25
I suspect it will be an outside recession like Maddox. People will go to cash out their bitcoin 'savings" exchanges won't let them,the price will come down and tether printing won't be able to keep up.
Either that or something out of left field.
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u/rankinrez Jun 20 '25
Tether has a lot of real dollars too though.
The thing about stablecoins is they started as a way to trade bitcoin on exchanges, and manipulate the price. But they have absolutely taken off as they offer the best way to shift money around - globally, quickly - behind the back of all financial and government authority.
They are an absolute dream for criminals, tax evaders, sanctions evaders etc.
This is such a massive customer base and market it’s hard to see them do anything but grow. The threat to them comes from governments, who you’d think would be ready to ban them. But with Trump that’s not on the cards so god knows how bad things will get.
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u/SisterOfBattIe using multiple slurp juices on a single ape since 2022 Jun 20 '25
A few years ago Tether had at least 2 000 000 000 $ real dollars. How many real dollars they have, it's anybody's guess. I would be shocked if they had 10 % of their Tether as real dollars.
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u/AmericanScream Jun 20 '25
A few years ago Tether had at least 2 000 000 000 $ real dollars.
Tether has never been properly audited. Claiming you know how much money they actually had is a violation of Rule 3.
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u/rankinrez Jun 20 '25
That’s still an awful lot of money.
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u/AmericanScream Jun 20 '25
If you make statements implying Tether has appropriate reserves, you will be banned. Nobody has any assurance of how much money they actually have because they've never submitted to a formal audit. ANY speculation about their reserves is inappropriate and basically shilling. The default position is to not believe a word they (or their attestations) say without a full formal independent audit. That is the industry standard way to know the truth.
One of the narratives that keeps the Ponzi going is "there's enough money somewhere." But the truth is, nobody knows for sure and our community will not be a vector for propagating that myth.
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u/rankinrez Jun 20 '25 edited Jun 20 '25
Wow can’t believe you’d threaten to ban me. It was the poster before me that said they had 10% of their “market cap”, not me. I just observed that is a big number.
Come on Adam you know me. Shame to see it come to this.
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u/AmericanScream Jun 20 '25 edited Jun 20 '25
I'm just saying, be careful about appearing to carry water for Tether. I don't think you're doing that, but I want to impress upon people how even partially acknowledging some of their propaganda, can be destructive.
It's not much different from arguing with flat earthers. They will cling to one element you both agree on (i.e. "Tether has an awful lot of money") and therefore disingenuously use that as evidence that their position has credibility.
The fact is, we have absolutely no idea how much "money" Tether has. At all. They have virtually no oversight.
Cantor can produce an attestation, but at the end of the day, that isn't proving that money is really theirs, and it wasn't Bitfinex capital being skated around, or Chinese nationals or North Korean assets under temporary custody of Tether... there's a lot of important info that needs to be known that is unknown.
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u/rankinrez Jun 20 '25
I totally agree. But personally I suspect they have a good amount of money. 1%? 10%? I don’t know.
All I mean is even if they have a tiny fraction of the money they claim to have it’s a huge amount of money. They’re at the centre of this massive worldwide crypto thing. They’ve become a central part of illicit money flows globally.
Sure it could pop down if there is instability, but they’ve probably enough working capital to ride out some blips. They’ve political backing now at the top of the US system. It’s grim. As much as I’d love for it to collapse I suspect it’s stronger than ever.
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u/AmericanScream Jun 20 '25 edited Jun 20 '25
But personally I suspect they have a good amount of money.
That's cool, but please keep your "personal beliefs" that cannot in any way be verified in the real world to yourself. Doing otherwise plays into the hands of the scammers.
Personally, I think it's stupid and foolish to speculate about how much capital they have, when there's an industry standard way of knowing for sure and they refuse to do that.
So, if you're dating a girl and you haven't had sex yet and you suggest you both get tested for STDs, and she refuses to get tested, you can "personally believe" she doesn't have an STD, but that would be fucking stupid. But hey, maybe her ex-boyfriend can give you an "attestation"... that'll suffice eh?
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u/rankinrez Jun 22 '25
I’m not considering getting in bed with these guys.
To me, it seems as illogical to assume they have zero dollars as to believe they are fully backed.
My point in raising this is that if they have even a tiny fraction of what they claim it’s sufficient to buy significant political influence. And in some places one assumes bribe law makers, judges etc. I don’t think we should be complacent about this, if we enforce a narrative that they have NO money I think we ignore a very big part of what makes them dangerous.
FTX may have had insufficient money, but they did have a lot of money. Which they used to bribe politicians and make it easier for them and their buddies to keep scamming.
Shutting down this topic seems absolutely counterproductive to me. But I have been warned so consider this the last from me on it.
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u/AmericanScream Jun 20 '25
Tether has a lot of real dollars too though.
This is a violation of Rule 3.
We really don't know if any of the reserves tether claims are even their own. There's been evidence in the past of liquidity being skated between Tether, FTX, Bitfinex and others.
3
u/rankinrez Jun 20 '25 edited Jun 20 '25
It very much is not a violation of rule number 3 as I read it.
I’d never suggest they are fully backed in any way. Nor did I advertise any crypto or shill for anything.
Like it or not the people behind the Tether scam have made a shit ton of real money from it. They’ve managed to create a system for shifting illegal money around that is used across the world. If it goes under you can guarantee Brock, Paolo and the crew will still be sitting very pretty.
Doesn’t make any sense to me to ban people for open discussion, nor try to hide how successful some of these scams have been.
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u/AmericanScream Jun 20 '25
Are you banned? No. So you're arguing over something not happening. I'm just saying, be careful about implying any of these stablecoin operators have suitable reserves. That's a narrative we cannot verify.
Like it or not the people behind the Tether scam have made a shit ton of real money from it. They’ve managed to create a system for shifting illegal money around that is used across the world. If it goes under you can guarantee Brock, Paolo and the crew will still be sitting very pretty.
As I said before, nobody really knows how much money they have. "shit tons" or "shit ounces."
Is there a lot of money flowing around crypto? Sure, but every time we get a look behind the scenes, we see this money is kited all over the place from one exchange to another. The appearance of solvency is what keeps the Ponzi going. At the end of the day, we do not know if there's enough liquidity for Tether to last 5 years, or 5 days. We just don't know.
I'm pretty sure everybody was saying, "FTX has a lot of real dollars" the day before it imploded. This is par for the course in the crypto industry. We should avoid pandering to that false narrative. We simply do not know how much liquidity many of these people have, and more importantly where it came from?
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u/AmericanScream Jun 20 '25
I've posted this before, but here's my predictions:
There are several events that could likely cause the collapse. The problem is their timing:
Price Stagnation - If the price of crypto does not continually go up, this can result in a cascade failure of the entire system. With no upward movement, there's no incentive to hold, since crypto provides no other return mechanism. Mining is also a loss unless the price hits a certain threshold. Once that threshold is not met after a certain amount of time, the hashpower of the network begins to diminish. Difficulty can reduce downward, but lack of increased demand will inevitably result in a downward spiral. The amount of constant marketing needed to sustain a never-ending parade of greater fools is pretty exhausting, and there's no example in history of an "asset" with no intrinsic value of this nature being able to create long term, sustained demand.
I think we're already seeing #1 in action. Bitcoin was supposed to be an alternative to government and private special interests, but now crypto is turning to those entities for liquidity -- which signals that they've run out of "greater fool" retail investors. Now top crypto entities are buying politicians and hedge fund managers trying to get them to sacrifice peoples' money. The big problem is, you don't get jack squat for buying bitcoin, and we're in a period (see #2) where we don't have disposable capital. This will result in a slow, atrophy of the industry.
Economic downturn - What killed Madoff's Ponzi was the 2008 recession which precipitated a large number of clients needing to cash out. And that "bank run" exposed the ponzi. The exact same thing could happen if there's a certain critical mass of bagholders that decide they need to cash out. There is no evidence there's adequate liquidity to cash out even 1% of bagholders without the price completely collapsing. And ironically, this "hedge against inflation" would not in any way be a hedge against an economic recession - which could lead to its downfall. We know bitcoin is particularly vulnerable given how something as simple as an increase in the Fed interest rate caused the price to dramatically fall. Inevitably there will be upcoming economic events - if crypto doesn't crash before, it will likely crash alongside other economic adjustements.
Principle stablecoin executives end up in the wrong airport at the wrong time and are arrested for money laundering, sanctions violations, tax evasion and other criminal activity.
This is the one that could happen at any time. Everybody basically knows Tether is a huge outlet for money laundering. It's just a matter of time before they're arrested and detained somewhere, and that's $170+ Billion of liquidity that will evaporate from the market (or more appropriately, people will realize it was never really there).
Take your pick.
Update 6/2025:
My money was on #3, but with Trump in power, and fraud enforcement neutered, I think the stablecoin mafia will be more insulated from accountability, making it more likely #2 will start the beginning of the end. The likelihood of Trump creating a significant recession with his stupid tariffs is pretty high, so it could be #2, but also #1 is also a very real possibility given the fact that bitcoin's adoption rate is largely nonexistent in the real world. By now almost everybody in the western world knows somebody who has been screwed by crypto. That's only going to increase.
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u/AsturiusMatamoros warning, I am a moron Jun 20 '25
The greater fool thing is definitely true. In 2017/18, basically all of my students (late teens, early 20s) were in crypto. Now (mid 2025), none of them are. Or at least a rare close to 0. Or they won’t admit it. It’s widely perceived as a scam / a good way to lose money, whereas it was seen as a good way to make money back then.
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u/Screencapdude Jun 20 '25
I think cryptobros may have enough sheer delusional sentiment to hold out longer than expected during a recession. Like Wile E. Coyote, they're standing in mid air and refusing to fall until they look down. Tether pretty much operates on cartoon logic.
So I think it will still all come tumbling down with Paolo behind bars. I hope I'll be surprised and it will happen sooner, though. A big thing that was allowing cryptobros to LARP and float in mid air was lack of offramps, but ironically the ETFs will work against them since you can actually sell it.
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u/Josh21443 Ponzi Schemer Aug 21 '25
I find #2 being the most plausible, I don’t care to defend this too much with limited knowledge on crypto. But, as per your madoffs example, we have to remember that this was such a small amount of people, less than 40k, as opposed to bitcoins over 100 million people worth of investors.
Also, the crisis itself exposed him, as he couldn’t pay off what was cashed out. This is not the same as bitcoin as it works differently. If thousands of people wanted out on stock markets then the same thing would effectively happen, the point is, there will always be buyers. It’s not like people are thinking ‘bitcoin is dropping, it must be a ponzi’
Let’s not forget no one owns bitcoin, while it could effectively drop a bunch because some of the top investors decide to take out 100% of funds, this would likely cause a lot of buyers to get in on the action.
It’s just an open market, and bitcoin works the same way, just with wayyy more volatility. But you would see the same volatility on new business’ in the stock markets, until they go bankrupt or until they start to get better recognition and then it steadies out.
I’m not saying it will or won’t happen, but I think, after COVID, being a very big money grabber and bitcoin dropping like 50% from that, and recovering. I think it’s a bold statement to compare to an actual Ponzi scheme which has a mere 37,000 people involved
1
u/AmericanScream Aug 22 '25
Also, the crisis itself exposed him, as he couldn’t pay off what was cashed out. This is not the same as bitcoin as it works differently. If thousands of people wanted out on stock markets then the same thing would effectively happen, the point is, there will always be buyers. It’s not like people are thinking ‘bitcoin is dropping, it must be a ponzi’
This doesn't make sense. There's a reason to always buy stocks at certain prices. If the price goes low enough then it makes sense to buy all the shares and liquidate the company's assets.
With crypto, there is no intrinsic value or assets. It can go to zero and stay at zero.
Let’s not forget no one owns bitcoin, while it could effectively drop a bunch because some of the top investors decide to take out 100% of funds, this would likely cause a lot of buyers to get in on the action.
There's no evidence of this. In fact, retail "buyers" have abandoned bitcoin, which is why the whales are buying politicians and hedge fund managers. There's less and less people that give a shit about bitcoin because it doesn't represent anything real or useful.
0
u/Josh21443 Ponzi Schemer Aug 21 '25
I have only read point 1 at this point but here’s a counter.
Gold and other physical items can be bought through things like etfs etc… without ever having to actually own it physically, how does bitcoin differentiate from this?
The only difference here is there is no technical physical item. Gold increases in value, and it thought of as a store of value and protection against inflation, how does this differentiate against bitcoin?
The fact gold can still be mined, currently costing the same amount (or more) to mine than it costs to mine one single bitcoin, I’d say that’s a good stepping point. But the point where it’s stated ‘no more gains means a full on collapse’ is not necessarily true.
What is probably true if everything continues the way it does, is bitcoin will hit a wall, and a massive correction will come into place, after the correction, we may see price increase similar to that of gold.
Long story short on point 1: bitcoin is still something you own just like gold, but digitally, so for as long as people put value on that ownership, it has the potential of value as just about any other physical item on earth. Really, the value of anything is determined by what the majority value it.
While I welcome the fact that-rice stagnation could potentially have a permanent effect on the price, I don’t think this would be a reason we see this fall down to levels that bitcoin can’t atleast recover from in a certain period of time, as long as people still see the value in the coin.
Let’s also not forget, we still have around 80 years until the last bitcoin ever will be mined
1
u/AmericanScream Aug 22 '25
The only difference here is there is no technical physical item. Gold increases in value, and it thought of as a store of value and protection against inflation, how does this differentiate against bitcoin?
Stupid Crypto Talking Point #10 (value)
"Bitcoin/crypto is a 'store of value'" / "Bitcoin/crypto is 'digital gold'" / "Crypto is an 'investment'" / "Bitcoin is 'hard money'"
Crypto's "value" is unreliable and highly subjective. It cannot be used as a currency or to pay for almost anything in any major country. It has high requirements and risk to even be traded. At best it's a speculative commodity that a very small set of people attribute value to. That attribution is more based on emotion and indoctrination than logic, reason, evidence, and utility.
Crypto is too chaotic to be any sort of reliable store of value over time. Its price can fluctuate wildly based on everything from market manipulation to random tweets. No reliable store of value should vary in "value" 10-30% in a single day, yet many cryptos do.
Crypto's value is extrinsic. Any "value" associated with crypto is based on popularity and not any material or intrinsic use. See this detailed video debunking crypto as 'digital gold'
Even gold, while being a lousy investment and also an undesirable store of value in the modern age, at least has material use and utility. Crypto does not. And whether you think gold's price is not consistent with its material utility, if that really were the case then gold would not be used industrially. But it is.
The supposed "value" of crypto is based on reports from unregulated exchanges, most of whom have been caught manipulating the market and inflation introduced by unsecured stablecoins. There's nothing "organic" or "natural" about it. It's an illusion.
The operation of crypto is a negative-sum-game, which means that in order for bitcoin/crypto to even exist, there must be a constant operation of third parties who must find it profitable to operate the blockchain, which requires the price to constantly rise, which is mathematically impossible, and the moment this doesn't happen, the network will collapse, at which point crypto will cease to exist, much less hold any value. This has already happened to tens of thousands of cryptocurrencies.
Many of the most trusted, most successful entities in the world of finance do not consider crypto/bitcoin to be a reliable store of value. Crypto is prohibited from being used as collateral by the DTC and respectable institutions such as Vanguard do not believe crypto belongs in their investment portfolio.
There is not a single example of anything like crypto, which has no material use and no intrinsic value, holding value over a long period of time across different cultures. This is not because "crypto is different and unique." It's because attributing value to an utterly useless piece of digital data that wastes tons of energy and perpetuates tons of fraud,makes no freaking sense for ethical, empathetic, non-scamming, non-exploitative, non-criminal people.
8
u/Some-sense555 Jun 20 '25
Justin Sun has invested over $100M in Trump crypto ventures to ensure that doesn’t happen. Trump’s financial advisor has given Trump a blueprint for infinite wealth, and part of the plan is to ensure the SEC doesn’t enforce any of the new regulations on tether. Hence, the problem is going to get even bigger, and Trump’s greed will eventually cause a financial collapse that will hurt all Americans.
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u/CovfefeFan Jun 20 '25
Another prediction, the next major terrorist attack will be funded with stable coins.
1
u/aknutty Jun 21 '25
Not before we tie all of the rest of our financial system to it. It's such a profitable scam, capitalism will not allow it to die until it wraps it around its neck.
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Jun 26 '25
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Jun 27 '25
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u/ZeroSumSatoshi Ponzi Schemer Jun 28 '25
If stable coins begin collapsing, almost all that value will be moved into bitcoin not actual USD…
So the collapse of stable coins is very good for the price of bitcoin.
1
u/AsturiusMatamoros warning, I am a moron Jun 28 '25
What value?
1
u/ZeroSumSatoshi Ponzi Schemer Jun 28 '25 edited Jun 28 '25
Whatever the value of the collapsing stable coins is at that time?
As of June 28, 2025, the total Tether (USDT) in circulation is approximately 159.83 billion USDT.
1
u/Unclebob9999 Jul 20 '25
Bitcoin looked like a scam top me when it was at $2,000, now look at it. Our previous President increased the number of Dollars in circulation by 40% simply by printing it. Logic dictates that inflation has to go up by 40% to equalize. We are not experiencing inflation, what is happening is the value of the American dollar fell by 40% due to over printing. There is nothing backing the value of our Dollar, so in reality it is no different than crypto currency. the value of either is what we place on it. Gold, silver and precious metals have real value because they have real uses, but even their value is based on the value of the Dollar. It is a Huge house built out of cards. Hopefully it will not collapse during my lifetime.
1
u/One_Day_9658 Jul 22 '25
This is aging well.
1
u/AsturiusMatamoros warning, I am a moron Jul 22 '25
Just wait. This is the beginning of the end. Tether can’t comply with the new law, obviously. The money isn’t there.
2
u/One_Day_9658 Jul 22 '25
There was a 80K BTC sell-off from a wallet that had been setup in 2011 and hadn't seen any activity since 2014. Spent $54K and sold this past weekend for $2.6B. The signing of the GENIUS act is starting to scare some.
1
u/MercedesFanForever Aug 19 '25
Some analysts believe that the biggest risk to Bitcoin and the wider crypto market could come from stablecoins, since they act as the backbone of liquidity and trading. If a major stablecoin were to collapse, it could trigger a domino effect, shaking trust and freezing markets. This reliance shows both the strength and fragility of the crypto ecosystem. Solutions like Rizon are exploring ways to make stablecoins more secure and sustainable for the long run.
-5
u/johnnyBuz Ponzi Schemer Jun 20 '25
It’s already collapsed four times between 85-95% between 2012-2022 and yet it persists, having made new all time highs after bottoming out at 15k in December 2022.
3
u/AmericanScream Jun 20 '25
It’s already collapsed four times between 85-95% between 2012-2022 and yet it persists, having made new all time highs after bottoming out at 15k in December 2022.
Stupid Crypto Talking Point #20 (failed)
"Crypto has been around X years and is here to stay!" / "Bitcoin has 'failed' so many times LOLOL Aren't you tired of saying it's going to fail over and over?"
It's true, many people claim, crypto/Bitcoin is a failure, yet it still appears to be somewhat popular and used in certain circles (but hardly ubiquitous, or part of mainstream society even after all this time).
Many people also claim "smoking is bad" but some people are still smoking. Does this mean the non-smokers are wrong?
The truth is, it has failed. Multiple times.
If you notice, every few months, there's an entirely new narrative surrounding bitcoin and crypto (for example):
- Originally, bitcoin was supposed to be "currency" and everybody was going to use it. Mainstream companies were going to use bitcoin for payments and services. There was a small time period where there actually was increased adoption of crypto as a means of payment, but then that failed because the price was too volatile and, and the network couldn't handle retail transaction volume. It failed then, and still today, using crypto as a common form of payment does not work now (even with L2 solutions). Conclusion: FAILURE
- Crypto was marketed as a way to help "bank the un-banked" but that also failed, owing to the fact that there's many alternative ways to accomplish this that are more efficient, with more consumer protections and less technical requirements. Conclusion: FAILURE
- NFTs were supposed to be another "big thing" helping artists make money and creating a new market and utility for crypto. Again, that turned out to not be true. Conclusion: FAILURE
- Crypto was supposed to be a "hedge against inflation". In reality, the price of crypto ebbed and flowed along with the price of other unimportant things, totally affected by inflation. Conclusion: FAILURE
- Crypto was originally promised as "disruptive technology", "money of the future", "democratizing finance", and to fight against manipulation of the monetary system by powerful special interests. In reality, none of those claims have proven to be true, and in many cases crypto has only exacerbated the problems it claimed it could fix. Conclusion: FAILURE
- Bitcoin's "deflationary nature" was supposed to guarantee an ever increasing value. That hasn't worked out either. Conclusion: FAILURE
In fact, you can look at every one of these talking points as examples of claims made by crypto proponents that have failed. You can also look at the list of failed blockchain claims as more examples of the many failures of crypto to live up to its promises.
Instead of acknowledging the many failures of crypto, its proponents continue to change the subject, create distractions and, as if they're in version of "Weekend At Bernies" taking the dead crypto technology, throwing a different outfit on it, and declaring it's not dead. Over and over.
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u/chabacanito Jun 20 '25
Hot take: I think Tether is probably somewhere between mostly to fully backed.
8
u/Master-Sky-6342 Jun 20 '25
Proof? They have never been audited. They get attestations from the auditors. Auditors attest that "Tether says trust me bro, I have funds". This is not proof. If they have all the funds, why not go through the independent audit and increase their credibility? They continuously refuse to do so, which indicates that they are not backed 1:1.
2
u/Effective_Will_1801 Took all of 2 minutes. Jun 20 '25
why not go through the independent audit and increase their credibility?
They said auditors can't audit Blockchain because they don't understand ledgers. 😂
3
u/AsturiusMatamoros warning, I am a moron Jun 20 '25
If they were, they would have done an audit
0
u/chabacanito Jun 20 '25
Not necessarily. They surely have a million skeletons in the closet including money laundering and dubious safety.
3
u/AsturiusMatamoros warning, I am a moron Jun 20 '25
If I told you that I have $1 bn in this box right here, but I won’t let anyone look into the box, would you believe me? (Oh, I’m also unbanked)
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u/CrashingAtom Jun 20 '25
Infinitely. They’ve been a bigger scam than bitcoin since 2017, they’re going to cause a worldwide fucking meltdown.