A poetic vision of Paris' crumbling suburban high rises - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp/2015/10/01/a-poetic-vision-of-paris-crumbling-suburban-high-rises/ <comment><USER4> Disclosure: I am a big fan of brutalism. I had no idea that there was stuff like this in Paris. I'm almost tempted to go out and tour it - it's beautiful.

In Britain, where I live, there is a general tendency to view older buildings as nicer buildings. Generally this is because only the stuff that's nice enough to keep/protect ends up surviving. This leads me to wonder what will we choose to keep from the 20th century. Which buildings will still be standing in 2500?

Buildings like those in the article make me sad. They are currently in horrifically poor condition after decades of neglect. On top of that, they are very unfashionable, brutalism seemingly suffering a similar fate in France to the UK: association with low-quality housing projects, a mid-century utopia that quickly became a dystopia. In London I am surrounded by treasured buildings nearly all of which had to fight against demolition at some point - for example the gothic hotel at St Pancras: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Pancras_Renaissance_London...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Pancras_Renaissance_London_Hotel). I wonder, if we hung on to them for long enough for the associations to dissipate, would we come to treasure them?

<comment><USER5> I can't find a cite, but I was told that one hideous brutalist UK tower block was to be preserved as a warning to future generations.

Edit: The tower block that is National Trust listed. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/architecture/11129845...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/architecture/11129845/Come- visit-a-tower-block-say-National-Trust.html) Designed by a Bond villain, of course.

<comment><USER6> As long as they don't preserve New St Andrew's House in Edinburgh - <USER2> empty hideous thing that has been squatting in the middle of one of the most beautiful cities in the world like some rectilinear concrete tumour.

[NB Not to be confused with St Andrews House - which is really rather nice.]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you feel "Les Espaces d'Abraxas" is oddly familiar, it's because you've seen it before. It's one of the set of the Terry Gilliam movie Brazil ...

If you don't mind the French, [http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/visuel/2014/02/08/en-seine- sai...](http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/visuel/2014/02/08/en-seine-saint-denis- les-illusions-perdues-d-une-utopie-urbaine_4360634_3224.html) has more.

For a more representative portfolio of Paris suburb "architecture", you can look [http://www.thecinetourist.net/93---seine-saint-denis-la- cour...](http://www.thecinetourist.net/93---seine-saint-denis-la-courneuve-to- saint-ouen.html) and it's bleak.

<comment><USER8> It was also used for "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2".

[http://filmgeek.fr/2014/05/09/tournage-hunger- games-3-a-nois...](http://filmgeek.fr/2014/05/09/tournage-hunger- games-3-a-noisy-le-grand/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have a profound distaste for brutalism. To me, it is the antithesis of what architecture should be about: the design, and invention of timeless places where humans can blossom, and prosper.

I insist on the notion of timelessness. The Louvre for example, is almost 400 years old and yet; there are few monuments in the world that can rival with its beauty.

Here is the power of the classicism, and even the baroque movements: creating masterpieces that are not only useful for the people living in them but also inspire and please their eyes. They survive time.

<comment><USER10> I can't agree with this. There's nothing about brutalism that means it prevents humans 'blossoming' or 'prospering', whatever that means. The focus of a lot of brutalist architecture was on functionality – that is, discarding the pomp and frivolity of some older architecture – and making them more focused around the actual functional needs of humans.

The problem is that the brutalist movement, at least in the UK, overlapped with the poor construction methods of the 50s and 60s and economic realignment that resulted in brutalist social housing projects. In the long term, extreme under-investment in maintenance of these projects means that they deteriorate into uninhabitable hellholes.

But there are exceptions - the Barbican estate in London, which is as brutalist as it gets, is a great example of how this sort of architecture can work when properly funded and maintained.

<comment><USER11> _making them more focused around the actual functional needs of humans_

This often failed really badly, much worse than other schools of architecture. The unpopular Brutalist buildings are not just aesthetically hostile but have poor "UX".

<comment><USER10> I'd say 'sometimes' rather than 'often'. But the underlying reason for this is still the same – cheap construction, poor maintenance. And of course those are the unpopular buildings. But there's nothing inherent to brutalism that means buildings have to be constructed like that.

My favourite examples of this kind of thing are the 'New Towns' in the UK. These were build in the late 40s through to the mid 60s to deal with overspill from cities. Towns like Cumbernauld and Livingston in Scotland were designed to be very human-focused – easy to walk through, segregated road systems, distinct districts with local services, central civic centres and so on. A genuinely utopian vision of the future, in some respects.

The problem is that shoddy construction and poor maintenance made living conditions unacceptable. Demographic changes and the mass overspill from cities made for less cohesive communities – segregated underpasses for example became sites of violent crime.

I think that in most cases the reasons for certain brutalist developments being unpopular is down to causes distinct from the architecture – and I think it's a mistake to conflate the issues. Though it does explain the unpopularity.

<comment><USER12> I think blaming this on cheap construction and poor maintenance (true as it may be) is missing the mark.

Blaming it on brutalism is also, IMO, missing the mark.

The core blame here lies in the fact that these complexes are built in the style of the Radiant City, which encouraged monolithic buildings surrounded by "parkland" and public spaces. It was imagined as a utopian balance between urban and rural - everyone living in a tower would have ready access to ample public space.

In reality of course these projects are largely defined by their emptiness, and these public spaces unused (and consequently, unsafe). The shoddy construction and maintenance surely didn't help, but IMO was not the root of the problem - we have seen more traditionally built communities fall into disrepair but never reach the level of isolation and segregation we see in these buildings.

It's just coincidence that brutalism reached its popular height along with Radiant City urban planning.

More importantly, even though brutalism has fallen out of vogue, Radiant Cities have not - most new American urban cores (particularly in the Midwest/West) are built around this philosophy still, and the net result has been the gutting of once tight-knit neighborhoods and replacing them with soaring towers and empty sidewalks (see: Belltown in Seattle). Brutalism may be gone, but 50 years from now someone will write another article about this exact phenomenon, with glass-clad apartment buildings in their place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Stereotypical brutalism and stereotypical suburbia have one thing in common: they both look "dead" to us because they separate housing from commerce. That idea has been tried in many forms throughout the 20th century, and it seems like it just doesn't work. Even in cyberpunk dystopias with all these horrible skyscrapers, the artist will always depict residential areas with tons of businesses and blinking storefronts to look more "vibrant".

I spent my childhood in the "sleeping districts" of Moscow, which are as brutalist as it gets. Not a store in sight, just high-rise apartment blocks, huge spaces between them, and howling wind. Never met a person who could honestly claim to love it. Now I live in a European city where housing and commerce are thoroughly mixed, and it's wonderful.

</comment><comment><USER14> Those are some of the most attractive examples of concrete brutalism I've ever seen.

<comment><USER15> My jaw is practically on the floor - the brutalist architecture I'm used to in the UK is not a patch on these buildings. I had no idea they existed!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I first assumed these were concept photoshops of what suburban concrete could be made to look like. Never seen anything like it before.

[https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp- apps/imrs.php?src=https://...](https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp- apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp- content/uploads/sites/35/2015/09/Laurent-Kronental-Washington- Post-6.jpg&w=1484)

Beautiful, scenic, futuristic. But it does not look like a place I would ever want to live in. It really does look brutal, it almost has a fascist vibe.

<comment><USER17> I personally think it's gorgeous, but it stands and falls with the people who live there.

It's just like I sometimes see pictures of what in the US are ghetto suburbs and I think: this could actually be a lovely neighbourhood. (As a European who has lived all his live in densely populated urban environments it baffles me how people can't turn a neighbourhood where everyone has a free standing house with a yard into a pleasant place to live.)

<comment><USER18> As a European, I must assume you're familiar with the ghettos of Eastern Europe, and those in Paris as well. The question applies equally to those locations, as it might to Rio, Manila, Mexico City, Delhi, Jakarta or Detroit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Stunning, especially the pictures 'José, 89, Les Damiers, Courbevoie, 2012. (Laurent Kronental)' Livable and beautiful brutalism.

Opposed to 'Les Tours Aillaud, Cité Pablo Picasso, Nanterre, 2014. (Laurent Kronental)' which appears like a regular tower high rise, but with round windows.

While 'brualism' is a term that refers to concrete structures built in the 50s/60s/70s, take a look at a castle on top of a hill. It is brutalist. Take a walk down a street in London next to multi-story pre-Victorian office/official building, it is brutalist. Early US inner-city multi-story apartments (when the elevator started to become more commonplace) equally. The tripod stlye Hong Kong housing estates (central life block, with a corridor leading off at 120, 240 and 360/0 degrees, with 6-8 apartments per corridor).

It is brutal. It is beautiful. And a lot of think is evident. It isn't to be confused with high-rise in general, which be it office or housing, is dreadful: "We have some land, put a building here, make it tall." That fails.

<comment><USER20> > Stunning, especially the pictures 'José, 89, Les Damiers, Courbevoie, 2012. > (Laurent Kronental)' Livable and beautiful brutalism.

I lived in one of those apartments for a few years, with stunning view of whole of Paris - on the 14th July I could see a dozen different fireworks shows ! Big spaces, large terraces, huge windows... I love this place. The duplex apartments near the top of the buildings are my dream homes !

Alas it is not well maintained and a vicious circle having taken root it is now extremely expensive to maintain. Two thirds of the complex have been emptied and will soon be demolished to make room for a hugely tall Dubaï-like Russian office/apartment/hotel complex.

> Opposed to 'Les Tours Aillaud, Cité Pablo Picasso, Nanterre, 2014. (Laurent > Kronental)' which appears like a regular tower high rise, but with round > windows.

The apartments there are most definitely not as nice as Les Damiers - <USER3> Les Damiers, Tours Aillaud is cheap social housing. Used to be a difficult neighborhood, but being so close to La Défense it has improved a lot. The roundness and the colors are dear to my heart - I also have fond memories in those livingrooms with one round wall.

There are far worse places around Paris - those chosen by the author are absolutely not "crumbling neighborhoods". Vision 80 (one of his pictures), right on Le Parvis de La Défense as the ideal embodiment of the Athens Charter even qualifies as luxury brutalist housing - the top floor apartment with three half levels might not be wheelchair accessible but they are otherwise gorgeous spaces... I would probably have bought one of them if I had not so many children. Their Achille's heel is the maintenance and running costs.

Disclaimer: I grew up in La Défense, bathed in construction sites and Charte d'Athènes - I may not be the most objective person about lovely brutalism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It is sad to see the impact of modernist "Le Corbusier"-style urban planning. While the buildings are magnificent, they are located in dead neighborhoods, isolated from mixed-use commercial areas.

It is urbanism for architecture's sake. Where we tried to make humans fit themselves into immutable ideals.

Such areas stand in stark contrast with favelas, bottom-up vibrant communities (with a hell of a lot of problems for sure) where nothing is permanent, and there are no strict rules and zoning regulations.

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra Most of those look really nice. He should pay a visit to Novokuznetsk or Chelyabinsk or whatever blank post-soviet blank industrial city for really degenerate high-rises.

[http://my-magnit.ru/sites/my-img/st/tuls2.jpg](http://my-magnit.ru/sites/my- img/st/tuls2.jpg) something along those lines

<comment><USER13> That's Moscow, near Tulskaya metro station. The lower levels have been colonized by tons of shops, so it's not the worst place. The ten lane road still sucks though.

What I really hate is shit like this: [https://img- fotki.yandex.ru/get/5602/14833654.30d/0_983eb_cb...](https://img- fotki.yandex.ru/get/5602/14833654.30d/0_983eb_cbba44c_orig) Miles and miles of this, as far as the eye can see. Warehouses for people.

<comment> guard-of-terra This picture is lucky to have sunshine. Without, "it can be very depressing" (c) Eurotrip

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> lol, they didn't take photos of the worst neighborhoods. Actually most the photos here were taken in good or ok places. Even Nanterre is fine. I wonder why the photographer didn't step into Val d'Argenteuil ... plenty of brutalism there... pun intended.

<comment><USER23> A friend of mine used to live in the high rises visible in the background of the "Les Orgues de Flandre" picture and it was bad.

Between dealing in the lobby to urinating into the elevators you had pretty much the entire spectrum of shit going on.

Apparently they cleaned it up some by now.

Amazing is the fact that he still lives in the 19th (which is a very cool part of Paris in lots of respects) some 250 metres away and it feels like a completely different world.

<comment><USER24> It smells like piss everywhere in Paris. Even my Parisian friends call it "the smell of Paris"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Jonathan Meades makes some outstanding BBC documentaries about brutalism. The intellectual density and quality of his writing (narration) makes him totally unique and he has changed my view of architecture. Well worth a look if you can find them.

I wouldn't be surprised if he inspired this article given his last one was called "Concrete Poetry":

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03w7b7x](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03w7b7x)

</comment><comment><USER26> Am I correct in thinking that the people who have a positive view of brutalism are people with a background in architecture?

Because I've never met any non-architect who thought it was nice. It's part of a wider observation on my part about certain aesthetic tastes that only people who are part of specific in-groups declare themselves to enjoy works that 99% of people find unappealing.

Various kinds of modern art, for instance.

<comment><USER27> A person with a background in architecture probably has a different understanding about the meaning and origin of the very word "brutalism" than the average bystander does, so it's hard to say.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutalist_architecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutalist_architecture)

 _" Brutalism" as an architectural critical term was not always consistently used by critics ... "brutalism" has become used in popular discourse to refer to buildings of the late twentieth century that are large or unpopular – as a synonym for "brutal" – making its effective use in architectural historical discourse problematic._

"Brutalist" in English is a terrible, misleading name. It was about futurism and misplaced faith in concrete as a miracle material, not brutality. Given the way so many bad Brutalist buildings look, it's easy to see how people could make the mistake.

It seems to me that at least a few well-known architectural trends consist of 1) a few amazing masterpieces that become instant classics and 2) 20x as many cheap knock-offs, which everyone comes to hate, which are consequently not maintained well, which eventually give the trend a bad name.

The "International Style" is the other example (alongside Brutalism) that stands out in my mind; for every Seagram building or Lever House, there are dozens (hundreds?) of copycat school buildings or anonymous low-budget office cubes that end up looking like prisons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> ... "crumbling"?

I've seen way, way worse in dynamic, growing neighborhoods.

<comment><USER29> The journalist is making this bit up, these places are generally well maintained. There are buildings in bad condition in the Paris suburbs but they are not those pictured in this article.

<comment><USER30> Why aren't they used? I heard paris has a general unaffordability problem, complete with height restrictions and a museum city planning policy

<comment><USER31> They are used. These images are real in the same way a fashion shoot is real.

<comment><USER32> Exactly.

The light in the images gives a hint of how the illusion of emptiness was created. They're all shot early in the morning, waiting for the right moment when nobody is in the frame.

I have a book called "Tokyo Nobody" which does the same thing with Tokyo city scenes. It's unsettling because we're so used to seeing the same streets bustling with people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I find it surprising how little thought architects seem to give to how their buildings age. One feature you can find in many of these sort of dystopian cityscapes is rainwater marks below windows that make the buildings seem to cry.

I can't believe that in this day and age we are unable to prevent that sort of thing by using the right materials or by directing rainwater to some sort of drain.

</comment><comment><USER34> Wow, amazing architecture.

Anyone know if the 3rd photo down from the top[0] is part of the setting for the 1995 movie 'La Haine'[1]? It reminds me of the housing projects in the movie where the main characters live, especially that great scene where a dj points his speakers out his window to play for the neighborhood.

The linked wikipedia article about the movie mentions only the Parisian suburb of Chanteloup-les-Vignes as a filming location, but a cursory web search isn't turning up more evidence.

[0] [https://img.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp- content/uplo...](https://img.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp- content/uploads/sites/35/2015/09/Laurent-Kronental-Washington-Post-1.jpg)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Haine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Haine)

<comment><USER20> > Anyone know if the 3rd photo down from the top is part of the setting for > the 1995 movie 'La Haine'?

It is not, but your rightly recognized its style - both Les Tours Nuages and La Cité De La Noé in Chanteloup Les Vignes were designed by architect Emile Aillaud.

In 'La Haine' the Cité De La Noé appears as 'Cité Des Muguets'.

[http://www.yannarthusbertrand2.org/index.php?option=com_dats...](http://www.yannarthusbertrand2.org/index.php?option=com_datsogallery&Itemid=27&func=detail&catid=39&id=1186&p=5&l=1366)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I lived in Noisy-le-Grand for almost 5 years. Those buildings are really depressing. Some parts of the city are really dark and phantomatic at night, there is a lot of offices around and not much small local shops. They shot a few scenes from the movie Hunger Games there.

[https://www.google.fr/maps/place/6+Place+des+F%C3%A9d%C3%A9r...](https://www.google.fr/maps/place/6+Place+des+F%C3%A9d%C3%A9r%C3%A9s,+93160+Noisy- le-Grand/)

</comment><comment> V-2 Most of it is the pinnacle of bad taste, but surely impressive in its own way, and it can serve as valuable historic evidence of what was once considered to be "modern".

</comment><comment><USER36> I went through the pictures first, before reading the article text and the point that the photographs were taken on an analog camera. I have to admit, the "feeling" of the quality of the shots was a bit different. I know, in the end, you need to scan the negatives and there is probably some post-production color adjustment. Regardless, the quality of the colors and details is excellent...

</comment><comment><USER37> Crumbling? Some of those buildings are beautiful! If only we had had housing estates half as good as those in London...

</comment><comment><USER38> I didn't see anything crumbling there. You can like the style or not, but that's a different thing.

</comment><comment><USER39> They have set out to aestheticize a series of projects where humans do not live well. We consume these photos as art, but the feeling of profound alienation and danger inherent in such ill-formed spaces doesn't lead to healthy communities.

<comment><USER40> I understand most of these ensembles did fail, but I still struggle to deeply understand why? What made these fails and made other neighbourhoods or projects succeed. Even if some of the successful ones were emergent and not subject to a grand plan, I still do not see where the critical difference is other than maybe people do not like to be told how to live.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> What is a good book for a layman to understand the architectural movements? I can't differentiate brutalism, modernism, post-modernism - all "ugly boxes" in my mind.

</comment><comment><USER42> Crumbling, really? I find many of them quite beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER43> Those buildings look brutally beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER44> Poetic vision of Paris subway : [http://i.imgur.com/TyPhSok.png](http://i.imgur.com/TyPhSok.png)

Poetic vision of Paris streets : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2Mkz5F_yME](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2Mkz5F_yME)

</comment><comment><USER45> Patate de Forain anyone? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5A6RU377-k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5A6RU377-k)

</comment><comment><USER46> Architectural hell.</comment>


Review my app, Crate. - <AUTHOR> http://letscrate.com/register?inv=hn

<comment><USER3> I really like your interface. One thing I'm not crazy about with HTML5 is drag and drop uploading. I like that it exists, but please give me the regular type=file input box.

With drag and drop, it means I either have to resize my browser to access something on my desktop or open my filemanager to navigate to the directory where the files are. I'd much rather just click on a Browse... button and go from there.

Otherwise, very nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, good point. We'll add in the ability to click the dropzone for the normal file upload method soon!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interface looks nice. It seems easy to use. Lack of anything other than a signup form is... Off-putting. Made me wonder if you're just harvesting my email address.

As for the 'sharing' bit... I just give out the url of the file? Can't give out the url for the crate? Can't lock it down in any way, shape or form? If someone guesses my url, they can download my stuff?

<comment><USER5> I agree with the "lack of anything other than a signup for is off-putting".

Sorry, but I won't sign up for something that I don't know what is. This is probably obvious, I know, and that's exactly why I'm stating it here again.

<comment><AUTHOR> We've been busy with features so we haven't had a chance to work with the marketing site. But we understand that and that's totally fine.

<comment><USER6> For what it's worth, Woobius ran with only sign-up/login on the front page, for about 6 months, before we finally got around to adding some information about what the service was. In that time, being naturally viral, it grew to over 1000 users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I went to your website and I have no idea what it's about. All I see (on the home page) is a "Login" or "Register" button. Your tagline is "Ridiculusly easy filesharing", but I can already share files with people via email or Facebook, why should I use your site? You need to sell me on your site.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is more of a "review the features of the app" rather than a marketing pitch, but definitely something we have in the works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Awesome UI, but there is no way in hell I'm giving you any files until you have some legal pages up explaining my rights, your rights, and what you can/will do with my information and files.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough, we're working on getting some policy pages up ASAP.

<comment><USER8> Fantastic. But as I said, the site looks great and is extremely simple to use (from what I can see) - my only concern is the TOS :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm doing that no-Flash-plugin-on-my-Mac thing and couldn't get uploading to work (and I also see a box noting a missing plugin). I "let go to upload," but the window just sat there. Switching to Chrome (which has Flash built in), everything worked fine.

As others have said, just having a standard upload button would work nicely. Same with click-to-copy, there doesn't seem to be a way to get the URL without Flash. Detect Flash, and then add in the "goodies" like that, otherwise the interface is much less usable.

Other than that, when Flash is installed, the interface is nice and easy to use. It's a great start and I look forward to more!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, click-to-copy is Flash only. Definitely looking to implement a fallback though :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I feel like we've reached a 1.0 (beyond a MVP because it has features that aren't necessary but greatly improve the UX, oh buzzwords!).

Crate = drag-and-drop + slick interface + easy sharing system of crates or single files.

We're still hard at work on it (you can tell that the marketing site is quite lacking...) but I'd love all your feedback. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER10> Why do I need to register to try it out? I'd be happy to spend a few minutes of my time trying something new, but having to fill in all this information is too much friction. I won't bother.

A button that allows me to create an anonymous test account with one click would be nice. If I like the service, I would like to turn my test account into a proper account, keeping my data. If I don't like it, and abandon my test account, you can delete it automagically after a month. Please do keep me logged in the whole month, though - I might change my mind and come back again.

<comment><USER11> Seconded. I think an app like this should allow anonymous users for small files.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I like the idea, however I would really like short sharing urls for all files. My use case for sites like letscrate is for quick file transfer for things like printing from untrusted computers. I also would like a regular file input box like @leftnode, since many of my files are hidden many layers deep from my desktop.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, the short URLs aren't that short. We're adding in nice "lts.cr/a" URLs soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love how simple it is :) Nice job guys! The one thing which I would change is jumping to the other window to add my files to the crate I just created. I see the crate I just created added to my list but then the screen suddenly jumps to the other view. Other than that it's very nice!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it is a bit sudden. We'll work on making this smoother.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Drop area need to be full window. At present it is just one rectangle.

I dropped 2 files and figured it out for third file.

Edit: Also it not immediately obvious that clicking on file copies URL pointing to that file.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, that's the biggest usability problem on our list; workin' on it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks nice, you need to make it so the file is force downloaded. I uploaded an html file and it just viewed it.

<comment><USER10> Being able to view files directly in my browser is nice. Forcing a download just so that I can open the same file in the same program is just annoying.

But be careful! If you serve user-uploaded, untrusted files from the same domain as everything else, that's a great way to make yourself vulnerable to XSS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I agree with others - just put a brief bit of info to let people know. OK - <USER2> works really well for me. I'd like to be able to rename the files that are uploaded and I'm not sure how I give access to them to others, unless its purely via the URL (what about password access)? I still think you've some way to go, but its good. Some documentation and/or a video would be really useful

How have you created the drag and drop uploading?

</comment><comment><USER17> It doesn't seem to work with folders... I dragged an Xcode project folder on to it and it spun forever at 0% uploaded.

Other than that, it's pretty cool. Very nice interface. You should make a shell extension or something so I can right-click on a file to add it to a crate (and copy the URL to that crate); that would be very handy.

</comment><comment><USER18> I like the simple and clean layout, however, what I really need is a way to send large files (>200meg).

<comment><USER19> Have you tried FilesDIRECT? It lets you send files up to 2GB, store up to 30GB (to start!), has tons of features and a 1 month free trial. I believe there's a 50% off sale going on too, but I'm not sure if it's still on...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I dig it. So how about widgets to embed "drop here to store this in create X" within other apps?

</comment><comment><USER21> I tried signing up and the signup page just reloaded with red lines around it.

</comment><comment><USER22> Drag and drop upload hangs at 0% w/ Safari 4.0.2 and Flash 10,0,32,18.

</comment><comment><USER23> Just having a red box around the bad part of the submission form is not enough. I didn't even notice the box had changed color for like 20 seconds, because the border is so thin. But you need some text too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point! We have this for the login I think, but we'll add this to the register page too.</comment></comment>


This is how Google is killing the Web - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/d9baf7179950

<comment><USER2> This article misses that the browser version of installing an app on a computer is bookmarking a web page in your browser. With cloud syncing I can even take my bookmarks with me across different computers.

In their example, if I came across a useful website called 'Stayful' it would be bookmarked and available for quick access the next time I'm planning a holiday.

<comment><USER3> Chances are you have more than 50 bookmarks. Mainstream users have a hard time finding what they saved on their bookmarks. Except for being synced on the cloud. We are still confined to the same bookmark experience we had 20 years ago.

<comment><USER2> I've got several hundred bookmarks, but they're certainly better sorted than the apps on my phone. I've got them in subfolders by type, and as another poster noted the address bar autofills from the bookmarks so it takes me no time at all to find any of my bookmarked pages.

In contrast I can only sort the apps on my phone on to one of several pages, and to find one I have to flick through them looking for a particular icon. I don't even get customized text descriptions, let alone subfolders, customized icons...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The obvious truth (axiom in mathematics) in the article is Google search is hiding the applications by showing only the search box and not showing lot of icons like windows desktop or smartphone. I argue it is not true, I assume the following is obvious

1\. Windows desktop or smartphone usually show 50-100 application 2\. Google search has to show billions of web pages

therefore I argue that it is simple impossible for Google to show billion of pages like Windows desktop and smartphone. Hence Google show the search box instead of icons.

<comment><USER3> Don't think the problem is with the amount of indexed pages. Just the way we need to access what we already know and use. Chrome provides us with the top 8 most frequent sites. This keeps us going again and again to the same sites. Harder to make a habit around a new site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bunch of FUD, especially considering Chrome Apps that do the same thing as desktop apps. Google isn't killing the web; at the very least not like this.</comment>


Facebook has so many pages, Y Google no rank them highly? - <AUTHOR>

Is google intentionally lowering the rank of facebook pages? You search for something like "iphone" and you don't get any pages about the iphone on facebook. You get sites like mashable, engadget, etc, but no facebook pages? Facebook is one of the top sites, so why wouldn't it have a high ranking on practically every query? Is Google intentionally lowering the rank of Facebook (and twitter's tweet pages for that matter) because they're big competition on the web for Google? <comment><USER2> I have no inside knowledge and I speak only as a research student working on search engines, but my guess would be that Facebook and Twitter don't allow their pages to be crawled[1]. If I recall MS had to strike a deal with both of them so that Bing could use them in their results. Another "problem" is that the notion of document relevance varies from a "standard" web page to a social network[2], and mixing them up on the same result page could be confusing.

[1]: a good social search would need realtime access to the API of those websites, which is why you still see "some" content like FB profiles in Google's results.

[2]: what I mean is that you have additional parameters to take into account: incoming/outcoming edges, "status" of the author, additional metrics of popularity, redundancy of content... Social search is an entire research topic of its own.

<comment><USER3> Twitter tweets show up quite often in search results

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wouldn't say "lowering the rank" but Google does have special cases, white lists, etc. It'd be in everyones interest for them to factor out many Facebook entries except for Profiles, Pages, apps, and Facebook internal pages. Else, people would try to use FB posts to game the results. The same likely goes for tweets.

</comment><comment><USER4> Google's algorithm has evolved since the PageRank days of yore, but basically it prioritizes being linked to.

And nobody links to Facebook pages.</comment>


Why downloading Firefox is like getting into college - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/04/why-downloading.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't understand why Seth is pro-college on the blog all of the sudden. Every single one of his books takes at least a few passing swipes at college, and some of them downright trash the institution in general. I understand that this is about the social signaling value of school, not the pedagogical function. However, this is what is said in The Big Moo about the social signaling value of school only three years ago:

"The new secret of success is that winning the game has absolutely nothing to do with hard work and paying your dues. In the old days stable industries offered young workers a pyramid structure. If you did the work and stuck it out you'd move up."

"In our fast-moving media crazed culture, the opposite is now true. Those who fit in now won't stand out later. Those who follow the rules are never noticed - because the system has broken their spirit. There's plenty work for the undifferentiated masses, so you can have as much as you are willing to handle. The fast-rising stars are those that question authority and refuse to do what's done before."

<comment><USER2> This article is not pro-college. He's talking about correlation != causation. ie. going to college doesn't necessarily _teach_ you anything you wouldn't get elsewhere -- rather, it is an indication of what kind of person you are (the kind of person who goes to college... who is more likely to be smart than the kind of person who _doesn't_.)

Hence the relation to Firefox: just like college, using Firefox doesn't actually make you smarter (though an ignorant view of the statistics might make you think so) -- but the fact that you are using it in the first place, says something about the kind of person you are.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did edit my post to make it clear that I was referring to the social signaling value of colleges, not the pedagogical value, but you may have pulled up my comment before this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Seth must be starting to run out of things to talk about. If he had simply stated the fact that 50% of Squidoo users who make pages on Squidoo use Firefox to do so that would have been fine, Equating going to college with downloading and installing Firefox is a weak reference.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the idea of treating Firefox users differently is interesting.

<comment><USER4> Well we already get treated differently (badly) by IE-only sites! It would be nice to see the tables turned.

<comment><USER5> (honest question)

What IE-only sites are actually worth visiting?

I've been using Firefox forever, and Netscape before that, it's been more than 5 years (maybe even more) since I found a browser-specific site that had any value.

My wife and I both use Mac's (hers at home, mine for home/work), so I can be pretty sure that I haven't had to resort to IE for some odd site.

<comment><USER6> Utilities (my gas company) and some banks with good interest rates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree with the spirit of his post. The college reference seems a bit off, and I'm not a big fan of college == success/smart. This is both because I couldn't bring myself to pay others to teach me things I mostly already knew (or could figure out for myself), and because most of the worlds top richest people are all non-college educated (most have some college, but no degree, not sure about Slim off the top of my head, but I doubt he has any).

</comment><comment><USER7> _The reasoning: In order to use Firefox, you need to be confident enough to download and use a browser that wasn't the default when you first turned on your computer._

Firefox is standard on Ubuntu. If I download and install a new OS, does that make me a super power user? Don't some Dells come with Ubuntu pre-installed?

<comment><USER8> Very few, and you'd still have to be a bit of a ballsy user to buy an Ubuntu dell instead of a Windows (unless it's significantly cheaper).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hmmm by observing people's behavior, you can estimate what kinds of people they are. There's a shocker. I'm still not quite sure what college had to do with it all. Another observed behavior I think was his thought.

</comment><comment><USER10> so, how do safari users stack up?</comment>


Reverse Engineering the Stylophone (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://www.waitingforfriday.com/?p=334 <comment><USER2> Interesting article - I've just partially resurrected a "Pro" Stylophone (Model 350s) for a client of mine - it was horribly corroded internally (battery leakage), and also in need of a decent PSU (as the default 18v supply from two 9v batteries on this model drastically reduces the lifespan of some of the components) running at about 15v.

Unfortunately the keyboard and resistor ladder were too badly corroded to make it economically viable to fix it (client didn't want to pay - it would have taken me at least half a day to do it properly, and it's not really worth that when you can get a recon one for £199), so only half the keyboard works well (or as well as a stylophone ever did). The 350s added some interesting extras to the original stylophone - different waveforms (described with names of real instruments which is stretching it a bit), a 'reiteration' stylus (which produced a rhythmic on/off of the note selected with it), and an optical sensor for Wah-Wah or vibrato intensity. I'd imagine that properly built it would have been an interesting machine, although I don't know where it sat price-wise against 'real' synthesizers of the day. The owner has had a few hit songs, and it was interesting to realise that it was the actual instrument I was repairing that featured on one of his hits!

Pity that the whole thing is somewhat tainted with the association with Rolf Harris, like so many things from my youth in the 70s in the UK.</comment>


Show HN: Directory of 300 companies doing social good - <AUTHOR> http://www.goodgigs.app/companies <comment><USER3> There should be a branding mark they can put on their products - <USER2> "organic" or "cage free" -that helps people knew when buying that they are supporting a company like this

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeh good idea. B Corps do have a mark via [https://bcorporation.net/](https://bcorporation.net/), and these companies are pretty active at promoting it. Not so much for social enterprises</comment></comment>


Show HN: Gatus – Automated Service Health Dashboard Written in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/TwinProduction/gatus <comment><AUTHOR> Gatus is a project that I started because I wanted to have an automated service health dashboard, and I wanted it to be as low maintenance as possible.

Originally, determining whether a service was healthy or not was going to be very simple: is the status 5xx? If yes, the service is unhealthy, otherwise, it's healthy.

After implementing that, however, I felt that it was bit too lacking. Sure, it could've helped roughly determining the availability of a service, but it wasn't able to make the difference between "everything is ok" and "everything is not ok".

For instance, let's say you want to test an endpoint that should return a list of recipes, and for whatever reason, the endpoint starts returning an empty list of recipes. The endpoint would still return a 200, but there's no content, so is it really accurate to call the service "healthy"?

That's why I implemented a way to supply conditions that Gatus will evaluate in order to determine whether a service is healthy or not. These conditions range from status code to body comparison with the help of a JSONPath-like syntax. I also extended that by adding the ability to resolve the length of the value of said JSON path, which allows even greater flexibility for when you don't know exactly what the data is (or the data is bound to change), but you know that this data should exist, or a certain number of elements should be returned.

For the example I mentioned earlier, the solution would simply be to add the following condition to the service configuration: `len([BODY].recipes) > 0`. This condition would make sure that the response body has the field `recipes` and it has a length of at least 1.

I wrote a short article on my website, if you want a bit more context: [https://twinnation.org/articles/46/gatus-automated-health- da...](https://twinnation.org/articles/46/gatus-automated-health-dashboard- with-alerting)

Any feedback is greatly appreciated :)</comment>


Show HN: A guide to serverless Python web apps - <AUTHOR> https://compellingpython.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I spent the last 6 months working on this project for about an hour every evening. I use this serverless Python web app framework on all of my sites (including compellingpython.com itself), and I got several great technical reviewers to look over the material, so even though there are a lot of potential improvements I think it's a solid guide.

This is the first time I've tried to sell something like this online, though, so I'd be grateful for any constructive criticism on sales flow, etc. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER2> Can't see anything without proving an email / signing up? No thanks. Sorry. I can find plenty of serverless guides in a single Google.</comment>


Registration Now Open for Subversion Live Events - <AUTHOR> http://www.wandisco.com/events/subversionlive2010

<comment><AUTHOR> Registration is now open for Subversion Live, a series of one day conferences for developers, administrators and IT managers to be held at four locations in the US and the UK in September. Each conference will feature live sessions covering Subversion's future with the developers creating it, as well as expert-led best practices workshops focused on getting the most out of using Subversion.

During these one day sessions for developers, administrators and IT managers, you'll find out what's coming next from the core Subversion developers building it. You'll also spend time with experts who will show you how to get the most out of Subversion, whether you're just planning your first migration, or you've been using Subversion for years.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I join Google - <AUTHOR>

Recently Google offered me a job.
I was ecstatic as I was frustrated with the work at my current company and intrigued by the scale of the problems worked on at Google.  This was my third attempt having interviewed previously while in Grad School without success.
The Google offer is also a decent bump in compensation with a raise, GSUs, and bonus. However, the commute to Google is almost three hours round trip compared to the one hour I drive now.
When I told my company they came back with a comparable salary and significantly more options that could potentially be worth 3 to 6 times the GSUs.  Also, they offering me a new role in management.
If I was single I would jump at the Google offer and rent an apartment nearby and work on problems of a scale I haven't before.
I am in my late thirties and married with a young child I like to spend time with. I am willing to make some sacrifices to advance my career but not sure whether it is better to move to management with my current company and potentially make more money on my options or if it is wiser to join Google and work there for three to five years and build my resume and experiences potentially sacrificing time with my family. <comment><USER3> Do you love what you do at your current company? Does being in management afford you more ability to do what you love? Will working at Google allow you to do what you love?

It should just be about the money. And you'll likely find those extra 2 hours commuting will come from time you would have spent with your kid.

<comment><USER4> Hopefully you meant to say that it should be about more than just the money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So why you applied for a position at Google? You just want to have such an exprience or you really want to work at Google?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was kind of bored in my current job, and Google contacted me to interview.

At first I was hesitant because of my failure the first two times I interviewed and the fact that I now have a house far from the office. Both times before, I thought I had actually done very good.

I decided to go through the process, though, because I would really like to work at Google all things being equal. In the end they offered me much better compensation and stock than my current job. However, my company countered with a new role, more money, and options.

In the end, I have decided to take the Google offer and at least try it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 3 hours of commuting a day isn't practical. You won't last. Maybe your options should thus include moving?

<comment><USER7> I did it for years. It's like any other drive you do on a routine basis - <USER2> eventually just tune out, and then it seems to go by quickly. Get satellite radio and a Valentine One.

<comment><USER6> Wow. I can understand the need to commute for 3 hours a day if the person really needs the money/is in a financial situation. But this guy is potentially working at Google, and to me, the general tradeoff for 3 hours of your life every day isn't worth it. I guess its down to personal wants though, I hate commuting for work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I thin you should message Google back telling them about this issue, and that you have received a raise from your current company, this will alert Google, and will lead them to countering their first offer.

<comment><USER9> I agree.</comment></comment>


Matt Mullenweg is now Automattic's CEO - <AUTHOR> http://www.poststat.us/matt-mullenweg-now-automattics-ceo/

<comment><USER2> He wasn't before?? I'm surprised.

<comment><AUTHOR> He was the Founder and "President", but they didn't specifically say Toni would be the new President. Toni ran the day to day though, so that's what I assume Matt will be doing now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How is working at Automattic? I'm in the market for a new job and would love to work remotely for someone.

<comment><USER4> A few years ago, I was debugging a problem on a Wordpress.com hosted site and found that they put a job ad in their HTTP response headers, based on the notion that anyone looking at their HTTP headers would be the sort of person they would want to hire.

<comment><USER5> Some fun things to do with sites of companies for which you would like to work:

\+ Check out their source code in a web browser

\+ Check out their HTTP headers

\+ Check out their 404 page

\+ Look for a humans.txt file

Every once in a while, a company that has an engineering team with a sense of humor will hide an Easter egg in one of these places. And sometimes, it's a job posting.

Anyone know of other somewhat common places that companies use to hide Easter eggs?

<comment><USER4> In the CEO's bedroom nightstand.

Note: this is an advanced Easter egg hunting technique.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


PG-Strom: SSD-To-GPU Direct SQL Execution - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pg-strom/devel <comment><AUTHOR> Slides : [https://www.slideshare.net/kaigai/20170602ossummitanintellig...](https://www.slideshare.net/kaigai/20170602ossummitanintelligentstorage)

<comment><USER2> Could OpenCL (AMD, FPGA) be supported in the future?

<comment><USER3> A bit off topic on my side here but, I've been a aware of both OpenCL and FPGAs for quite a while but never thought of these being combined in any way.

Would anyone care to comment on their experience with regards to the following questions I have about this?

1\. Are you using an FPGA implementation of OpenCL, or are you synthesizing a specific piece of OpenCL code into the FPGA?

2\. How does performance compare between OpenCL running on a high-end GPU and a high-end FPGA?

3\. How does performance compare between implementing someting in FPGA directly and implementing it in OpenCL and running that on an FPGA?

4\. How does working with OpenCL for FPGA compare to working with the FPGA directly? Iow, what are the advantages and disadvantages you find of OpenCL as opposed to Verilog or VHDL (or other ways you program an FPGA)?

5\. Based on the above, if you had X amount of dollars that could buy you either a number of GPUs or a (probably different) number of FPGAs, which would you choose? Consider also the electricity cost of running these as I've heard that FPGAs generally waste less electricity because they produce less heat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems like a perfect fit for AMD's SSG architecture (1TiB flash storage directly on the GPU board).

<comment><USER5> It's Nvidia only, it has direct CUDA

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love the concept.p But it's hard to tell whether this is ready for production. Anyone have any hands on experience with it?!

<comment><USER7> This is the first time the concept has ever been shown publicly. You must be exceptionally brave to use it in production. Most CTOs are cynical, and always wait for the .1 version

<comment><USER8> Hm? I have not followed PGStorm but the project has been around for at least 5 years, probably more.

<comment><USER9> Early version of PG-Strom didn't plan SSD2GPU Direct SQL Execution, however, some users concerns didn't concern about CPU performance only but I/O also. So, I began to implement the feature to accelerate I/O also. Its development started at Dec-2015.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Note that GPUDirect is only available on nVidia Quadro and Tesla series GPUs.

<comment><USER11> Does that mean that this library[1] requires GPUDirect? That's sad.

[1]: [https://github.com/pg-strom/nvme-strom](https://github.com/pg- strom/nvme-strom)

<comment><USER9> Yes, Tesla or Quadro are required. In addition, Tesla P40/P100 are recommended due to size of i/o mappable region.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's great to see this type of evolution in database performance, maybe this will become the standard someday.

The only thing missing is that there isn't a comparable project for MySQL.

<comment><USER4> Not trying to be a snoot here, but what is the point of using MySQL today? I can't think of something that I'm aware it does better than Postgres.

<comment><USER13> Interoperating with code and data files that were made for/by MySQL.

<comment><USER4> Code I can understand, data a bit less. I'm just thinking that no MySQL program which has already been written is going to have any reliance on the performance characteristics of this flash-based database system, since it wasn't a thing when they were written.

If you could change the shape of your tables to suit this approach, then surely you could adopt Postgres.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wondering how much the "moving data to the GPU" overhead won't help to make things significantly faster

<comment><USER15> Really depends on the shape of the data and query at hand. If you're doing aggregate computations over million/billions of scalar-sized rows, it could be quite fast. However joining two cold tables will still be more limited by schema and disk read than anything.

<comment><USER5> Unless you're doing skipping and indexing properly....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This seems pretty nice. Does anyone know if there is anything similar in the oracle camp? This seems like a big win over them if not.

<comment><USER17> I suspect it might cut into their Exadata appliance market if they did, but I'd love to hear anything from Oracle indicating they were adding something like this to a new version. If you try to go massively parallel for workloads they seem to push us towards Exadata. Parallel table/index scans may be your best bet at the moment on Oracle.

As far as I know you can't do anything like custom scan providers in Oracle. I've tried searching a few times for functionality like that and always came up empty. Even if that was an available feature, I'm not sure how you'd even begin costing it for the optimizer to take that into account, unless it was something you'd just enable via hint.

I have OpenCL code running from within Oracle stored procedures via Java. You can at least write your own logic from within the DB to utilize your GPUs. I've done things like push 2 tables into GPU memory and let the GPU do the joins once you manually load the columns to join on. Return the set to SQL and use an indexed column to return the data you want from the table. It's not something I'd consider running in production, but it was a neat exercise and you can get it to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I still am hoping for affordable SSD to FPGA direct execution someday!

<comment><USER19> Direct execution? With GPUDirect from NVIDIA you could have an FPGA get a memcpy() from graphics RAM to its data has. Still, not sure how you plan on using this. I would hope that NVIDIA could give us programmable fabric on the GPU silicon, and it could somehow access each compute units instruction execution pipeline. Would be interesting indeed. Or just massive, fast FPGAs with included highly parallel compute IP built in. Or all new NVIDIA cards just ship a very fast FPGA that runs 3D graphics by default, but can be reprogrammed to do CUDA compatible computation and its open source so users can add new instructions or modify existing ones or even reconfigure the number or arrangement of cores.

<comment><USER18> Thinking something along the lines of, implementing/modelling SQL operators in FPGA hardware, using massive parallelization through the FPGA. That needs direct I/O access to very fast storage to be optimal, and probably still additional processing via a CPU or GPU.

Expensive custom data warehouse appliances like Netezza already do something like this, but I'm hoping for an implementation that is less expensive and more generally available, that can be exploited to accelerate any database's operations. Bonus points if it can scale up to a distributed model somehow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> throwaway-1209 Where clause is the worst possible use case for GPU: GPUs don't tolerate branches or non-coalesced memory access all that well, and WHERE executes a ton of branches. Even so, things seem to be faster. Go figure.

<comment><USER20> I think it hugely depends on what your WHERE clause is.

<comment> throwaway-1209 I guess if your where clause is very selective, you could avoid the hit since the same branch is taken by all threads in a warp. But then there are better approaches such as BRIN indexes, RLE and dictionary encoding with which you don't even touch the data that doesn't match your clause.</comment></comment></comment>


Crypto Market Roiled by New Allegations Against Tether, Bitfinex - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-25/bitfinex-operator-accused-by-new-york-of-850-million-coverup?utm_source=google&utm_medium=bd&cmpId=google <comment><USER3> From paragraph 60 in the filing (emphasis is mine):

"As explained to OAG attorneys by Respondents' counsel. Bitfinex and Tether have also used a number of other third party payment processors to handle client withdrawal requests, including various companies owned by Bitfinex/Tether executives, _as well as other 'friends' of Bitfinex - meaning, human being friends of Bitfinex employees that were willing to use their bank accounts to transfer money to Bitfinex clients who had requested withdrawals._"

<comment><USER4> This was rumored pretty heavily when Bitfinex said "Divulging [bank account] info could damage not just yourself and Bitfinex but the entire digital token ecosystem … you are cautioned that there may be serious negative effects with this information becoming public." LOL [https://news.bitcoin.com/bitfinex- introduces-top-secret-bank...](https://news.bitcoin.com/bitfinex-introduces- top-secret-banking-system/)

<comment><USER5> > "The New York Attorney General's court filings were written in bad faith and > are riddled with false assertions, including as to a purported $850 million > "loss" at Crypto Capital. On the contrary, we have been informed that these > Crypto Capital amounts are not lost but have been, in fact, seized and > safeguarded. We are and have been actively working to exercise our rights > and remedies and get those funds released. Sadly, the New York Attorney > General's office seems to be intent on undermining those efforts to the > detriment of our customers." > [https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/356](https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/356)

<comment><USER6> So they admit that the money was once lost, just they recovered part of it? Of course, they forgot to disclose.

<comment><USER5> No. They claim the money was seized from a "partner" (Crypto Capital) by various governments (~$400 million to Poland, etc), and they are trying to get it back.

<comment><USER7> And why wasn't that disclosed to customers prior to today?

<comment><USER5> That is between them and their "customers", I guess.

Bitfinex has been shady for a long time and tether from its beginning. So, good luck to them. But that is nothing new.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's the filing:

[https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/DocumentDisplayServlet...](https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/DocumentDisplayServlet?documentId=vIexA1b0spKOnK_PLUS_ZUGTJ3A==&system=prod)

<comment><USER9> Skimming through this I've come to some conclusions:-

A reliable banking partner is prerequisite to run a fiat-crypto exchange. Loss of banking partner is fatal to an exchange, and should immediately trigger a wind-down. On the flip-side, the banking partner should in good faith, continue to process withdrawals until the wind-down is complete. Bitfinex's refusal to wind-down after the Wells Fargo decision is irresponsible. Wells Fargo's decision to immediately stop processing withdrawals without a grace period is bad faith.

Reliable banking relationships are difficult to maintain if you are not in the same jurisdiction with said bank. If you want to process USD, you have to be in the US. Multiple fiat-currency crypto exchanges are not sustainable due to this dynamic.

I see a sustainable status-quo as fiat-exchanges becoming single-jurisdiction, single fiat-base. Ironically, just like most banks.

<comment><USER10> > Multiple fiat-currency crypto exchanges are not sustainable due to this > dynamic.

And yet, multiple-fiat-currency exchanges are, for some reason, sustainable.

<comment><USER9> Very few examples... Coinbase / Bitstamp / Kraken?

People don't realize just how much of a tightrope they are walking on [1]. Serving crypto requires a deliberate business pivot [2], and not many are keen. This IMO is the largest hurdle crypto is facing for adoption.

[1] [https://diar.co/volume-2-issue-23/#2](https://diar.co/volume-2-issue-23/#2) [2] [https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1312109/000119312518...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1312109/000119312518329074/d568616ds1.htm)

<comment><USER10> I'm talking about fiat exchanges that convert one fiat currency into another, and never touch crypto. They seem to figure out how to operate in multiple jurisdictions... But that's possibly due to the part where they comply with KYC and AML.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is this a surprise to anyone? I was under the impression that even the most ardent HODL-er thought Tether was, at best, a very risky investment, and more likely a total scam.

<comment><USER12> This is pretty big news; the entire cryptocurrency economy relies on tethers being valued at par, given that they're how billions of dollars of liquidity are denominated. While rumors and suppositions about Tether have swirled for quite some time, that was also true of Mt. Gox before the fall, and those of us who have been saying loudly that they're insolvent have not been widely believed.

<comment><USER13> Anyone in the cryptocurrency space with half a brain knew something was up the minute they refused an independent audit. It was only a matter of time before someone brought charges and/or Tether collapsed.

<comment><USER14> Which does make it rather curious that the music's kept playing, so far. Is "common knowledge" that it's probably a complete fraud (like this filing should give) required to pop the tether bubble? Or will even this not be enough?

<comment><USER15> People have been yelling that Tether is a ponzi fraud since it launched in 2015.

And yet it still trades 1:1 to USD today, after the court filing was released.

So is there some magic force that keeps the fraud running, and prevents market participants from cashing out their Tether in the mother of all bank runs?

If you hold Tether why wouldn't you sell?

Or is there more to the story than just "Tether is an obvious fraud"?

<comment><USER16> It's basically a giant game of chicken AFAICT, because tether is so endemic to the market that if the market as a whole gives up on that valuation then _everything_ goes boom.

<comment><USER15> How do you think this would work exactly?

If traders begin to lose faith in Tether, wouldn't they sell Tether and buy BTC, ETH, XRP, BCH, LTC, EOS etc.?

So wouldn't that cause the USDT price to decline to $0.97, $0.95, $0.90, $0.75, etc.?

And at the same time the demand for BTC, ETH, XRP, BCH, LTC, EOS would cause their prices to rise, wouldn't it?

I suppose at some point, after the $3B of Tether is liquidated, people could lose confidence in the entire market, but until that happens wouldn't cryptocurrency prices _increase_ rather than _decrease_?

<comment><USER16> Something like 80% of trades on the market currently involve tether, and tether accounts for ~$3 billion of (presumed) cash-like holdings. If it collapses then liquidity of the market is going to be severely hit, and the people trying to exit to fiat are likely to cause a variety of bank-run type situations.

These will be exacerbated by exchanges which have been run in bad faith and which do not have either the cryptocurrency or fiat reserves they claim (see Quadriga CX for a recent example).

Either way, it's going to be interesting to watch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So, let me get this straight...

Crypto Capital has claimed that the money is frozen and that's why they can't send it back. Execs at Bitfinex/Tether believe maybe Crypto Capital's principal, Ivan Lee, has stolen it and that's why he won't send it back. The NY AG contacted Portugese and Polish authorities and, from them, was informed that there were no official orders freezing Crypto Capital bank accounts in those countries. So the most likely scenario by far is that Ivan Lee has stolen the money.

The NY AG then files a civil lawsuit against Bitfinex, and in doing so reveals to Ivan Lee that the US government is aware that he has stolen the money.

But he (Ivan) has not yet been arrested. So now we have a guy who has committed a massive crime and who is comfortable with tax havens and living internationally and corrupting institutions and who has been given a fair warning to go into hiding before he inevitably is indicted. Oh, and he has $850,000,000. Doesn't he sound like, idk, a flight risk? If he flees, regardless of iFinex's failure to disclose the suspected loss to investors, gross negligance on behalf of the NY AG may contribute to investors losing $850 MM.

Why wouldn't they criminally charge the guy who they strongly imply has actually stolen the money first before they file a civil suit against the victims* dumb enough to send it to him? (* This is called VAF - <USER2> Assisted Fraud)

There's a lot of angles from which to look at this. Bitfinex/Tether are shady, no doubt. But if the NY AG actually believes what they are purporting to, this stands out to me as a bizarre choice.

<comment><USER18> "The NY AG contacted Portugese and Polish authorities and, from them, was informed that there were no official orders freezing Crypto Capital bank accounts in those countries"

I've read the 24 pages report and missed that part, could you quote it please?

To me, the whole thing looks like this: "Hey Bitfinex, you can't keep running your operations when you're missing 800M. We know that, because we're the one who seized that money from you"

<comment><USER17> Oops, I misread page 15 and confused the Respondents for the OAG. I was skimming. My bad.

> To me, the whole thing looks like this: "Hey Bitfinex, you can't keep > running your operations when you're missing 800M. We know that, because > we're the one who seized that money from you"

This sounds right. Pretty interesting stuff

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if this is somehow related, 550 BTC (~$3M USD) connected to 2016 Bitfinex hack were moved today:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/bha10i/bitcoins_fr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/bha10i/bitcoins_from_the_bitfinex_hack_2016_moved_today/)

<comment><USER20> This is only a small fraction of the 120k bitcoins stolen at the time though. It may be a coincidence.

<comment> village-idiot Allegedly stolen.

<comment><USER18> ? The FBI collaborates on the investigation and even returned them some funds they were able to seize a few months ago.

<comment> village-idiot It's a crypto exchange. The bar for it _actually_ being stolen by a third party is high. Usually it's just an exit scam, or they gambled with customer money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This article goes to great alarmist lengths, past the point of being deceiving. Just the very first line:

> _One of the world's most widely traded virtual currencies faces renewed > doubts about its stability [...]_

Tether is nothing in terms of crypto currency penetration. It does not even have a percent of daily trading. Then a few paragraphs down:

> _[...] within an hour of the attorney general's statement and Tether slid > 1.4 percent._

1.4 per cent. Even big cap stocks fluctuate that much some days.

> _At the time of the correspondence, Bitcoin was trading at around $6,500. It > dropped 4.7 percent to $5,236.03 at 12:10 p.m. in Hong Kong on Friday._

So they mention a price from 8 months ago, and then mention yesterday's price, implying that it fell that much because of this event.

Garbage journalism.

<comment><USER22> For something pegged 1:1 with the US dollar a 1.4% decrease is quite unusual.

It's volume is 2nd only to Bitcoin per [1]coinmarketcap.

With your 3rd point about pricing changes, yeah correlation/causation, it's a theory that is plausible though.

1.coinmarketcap.com

<comment><USER23> If the peg was actually backed by anything then yes, that'd be unusual.

<comment><USER24> Not really no, it depends on how much liquidity of a certain type is worth compared to liquidity of another type. Given the volatility in crypto markets this tends to change drastically in different times.

Same as why lending rates for crypto & fiat can go from 0.0001% to 0.08% (per day for example) in a matter of hours based on certain sudden price action.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> You might enjoy this court order: [https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2019.04.24_signed_orde...](https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2019.04.24_signed_order.pdf)

<comment><USER25> Doesn't this mean they can't sell/buy/exchange tethers at all!

<comment><USER26> It appears to mean they can't _issue_ new Tethers nor can they raid the Tether reserves, but it doesn't stop trading in Tethers themselves.

<comment><USER27> Well they issued some more tethers:

[https://whale- alert.io/transaction/bitcoin/0c8c22ee5cd69649f...](https://whale- alert.io/transaction/bitcoin/0c8c22ee5cd69649ff36c0396bb9ce951425614a32129d8d54c0144895ef4e7a)

on the same date as this court filing. Did the court filing happen due to the new new Tether minting or was it the other way around? Or just a coincidence?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think the news was out for some time and only now the rumor started to confirm.

Tether is trading at exactly $1/$1 on Kraken. It had touched $0.85/$1 on October 2018 though. It was discounted for the last quarter of the last year. The discount lasted for several months suggesting lack of liquidity and possibly lack of funds.

The Tether discount suddenly disappeared. And suddenly a discount/premium appeared on Bitfinex. However, that discount was getting smaller everyday and almost disappeared (until a bit earlier but still negligible in the volatile crypto market).

I personally hold a significant amount of USDT/Finex Dollars and not worried. I think the price is more relevant than the news. The probabilities or lack of funds will be builtin in the price. And the current price suggests that iFinex has got its shit together.

<comment><USER27> Why would you hold significant amounts of Tether? There's no upside and all of the downside.

Why do you do it?

<comment><USER29> It's used for margin trading at exchanges that do not accept fiat

<comment><USER30> I suppose leveraged betting is done best when backed by worthless collateral.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This seemed inevitable for a long time. Tether is very important for maintaining the price of bitcoin, and yet the stablecoin's financial condition has been an unanswered question. The company has raised every red flag and in a rational market, tether would have been priced at pennies in the dollar, with a corresponding markdown for bitcoin with the loss of "convertibility" to dollars.

And I honestly am surprised how pedestrian the fraud was. It sounds like they had the cash to back tether and just flat out stole it to cover for a trading loss. This has happened countless times before.

<comment><USER32> > And I honestly am surprised how pedestrian the fraud was. It sounds like > they had the cash to back tether and just flat out stole it to cover for a > trading loss. This has happened countless times before.

Where do you see anything like that? The report says that their funds were frozen by Crypto Capital as the result of (claimed) seizure by governments. The funds were borrowed from the Tether reserves to cover that shortfall. AFAIK, nowhere does it state that there was any trading loss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Predictably, the BTC/USDT market (on Binance) is showing an inflated price for BTC as people try and bail out. Elsewhere the price of BTC is falling. It's impossible to tell the real price anymore because, for the moment, both actions are cancelling each other out.

<comment><USER5> Looks like the last shakeout, not a big deal to anyone who didn't trust tether to begin with:

>"OAG does not seek lo enjoin or interfere with the orderly operation of Bitfinex or Tether' s legitimate businesses. if any. including orders by legitimate traders on the Bitfinex platform, or legitimate tether holders, to redeem their tethers for dollars. Indeed. protecting legitimate traders using the Bitfinex platform. and legitimate holders of tether. primarily those residing in New York, is why a preliminary injunction is necessary now to preserve the status quo pending the completion of OAG's investigation." [https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/DocumentDisplayServlet...](https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/DocumentDisplayServlet?documentId=vIexA1b0spKOnK_PLUS_ZUGTJ3A==&system=prod)

<comment><USER34> > protecting legitimate traders using the Bitfinex platform. and legitimate > holders of tether. primarily those residing in New York

Bitfinex doesn't accept US customers though?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Cryptocurrency exchanges seem to be full of fraud and deception.

<comment><USER36> Speaking as someone who was deeply interested in bitcoin in ~2013, cryptocurrency today is a wretched hive of scum and villainy. When someone tells me today that they are working on something related to crypto I make a mental note to never work with them or take anything they do seriously.

<comment><USER37> This quite an ignorant comment. I've been working with Blockchain tech (Crypto by extension) for a while now and there's a lot of experimenting, genuine projects being built right now. A lot of smart people are in this space building solutions. Major companies like Samsung / Facebook have teams working on PoCs.

Unfair to imply that everyone in Crypto is selling snake oil.

<comment><USER38> > Unfair to imply that everyone in Crypto is selling snake oil.

So, who isn't? Look throughout the blockchain ecosystem and all you will see are scams, illegal activity and get rich quick fools. I have personally yet to see a use of blockchain tech for useful legal purposes. Yes, you will see some companies "announce" that they are "investigating" blockchain or whatnot to get some free PR, but you don't ever see them actually release anything useful.

(I fully accept that blockchain has revitalized criminal enterprises such as child pornography, extortion, and Ponzi schemes, but I don't see any reason to celebrate that).

<comment><USER39> There seems to be a real project afoot with the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp but I'll give you that a) it hasn't released and b) they could probably do the same with MySQL [https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2019/04/16/b...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeldelcastillo/2019/04/16/blockchain- goes-to-work/#470a6e552a40)

It is hard finding legal and useful. There's a lot of legal but not that great like gambling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> So why hasn't the bottom fallen out of Tether yet?

<comment><USER26> Tether functions as sort of the reserve currency of crypto. Many exchanges don't even offer fiat money or banking connections - to use them, you have to send Bitcoin in from another exchange or a personal wallet, then you can convert it into Tether or other altcoins. People who are "getting out of crypto" by selling Bitcoins because they think the price is gonna drop oftentimes are actually buying Tethers. When 80% of crypto trading is denominated in your currency, there isn't really a bottom _to_ fall to.

To actually exit Tether, most of these people would have to _buy_ Bitcoins or another cryptocurrency accepted by most exchanges, register for the account verification processes there (every exchange that handles fiat money has the same KYC procedures as banks, i.e. take a picture of yourself and your driver's license and wait a couple days while an employee manually verifies it), transfer your Bitcoin to the other exchange, sell it to USD, and then move it out to a bank account. That takes time and a lot of hassle. We'd expect to see a _rise_ in the price of BTC at USDT-based exchanges as Tether holders need to convert to Bitcoin to get out, along with a fall in BTC at fiat exchanges as they sell that Bitcoin. To some extent this is happening (Coinbase Pro's BTC price is almost $100 less than Tether-only exchanges like Binance or Bitfinex), but it's less severe than I would expect from a true run on the bank. Most Tether holders probably figure they'll take their chances because the hassle of getting out is worse than the possibility of losing their investment.

Reserve currencies can go _a long_ time before people finally run for the exits. The US dollar hasn't been backed by anything since 1971 and is still ticking strong.

<comment><USER41> >The US dollar hasn't been backed by anything since 1971 and is still ticking strong.

I think you might be overstating. The US dollar is not backed by an _asset_ because it _is an asset_. At this point, the dollar is backed by the government, the government's authority, its military power, and the future value of its debt. That is not gold, but it is not nothing either.

<comment><USER26> By the same token, cryptocurrencies are backed by the computing networks underlying them, the potential future usage of these computing networks, and by your ability to buy guns, drugs, and hacks with them. This is also not gold (although you _can_ buy gold-backed cryptocurrency: see Digix), but not nothing either. That's why cryptocurrency evangelists harp on adoption and new use-cases: the value of _any_ currency is primarily set by what you can spend it on. Right now you can spend Bitcoin on a lot fewer things than US Dollars, but your personal profit potential from holding a currency derives from the _rate of increase_ in adoption, not its current level, and Bitcoin has a lot of room to grow while the dollar has virtually none.

Tether intrinsically has none of these, but because of its adoption by many exchanges, it's convertible into other currencies that have more intrinsic value. So as long as it remains convertible, it will continue to have value.

<comment><USER42> USD is backed (among other things) by the government accepting taxes in it. If you don't pay, they will come to your house with guns and take you away. This creates a demand for USD that is completely unlike any demand for crypto.

<comment><USER43> Again this weird argument. If the USD were valued due to its tax-demand, raising taxes would increase the value of the dollar!

Also the gov creates more supply to the dollar than the tax demand always, so its not really clear. And most taxation is a percentage of income or value measured in dollars itself.

This argument never clicked for me: where is it coming from?

<comment><USER44> The argument is not that this is controls the USD value. Instead, the argument is that this gives an intrinsic base value to the USD. This base value means people have some reason to hold USD, which causes them to make other transactions in USD. The actual current value from USD comes from the other transactions, but that is not intrinsic to USD. Instead, it is an emergent property.

The intrinsic value of USD is consoling, because it prevents the value of USD dropping to 0, hence there will always be a possibility of the emergent value reappearing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The other interesting speculation with Bitfinex is they may have used Tether money to manipulate the Bitcoin price. I wonder if we will get more info there.

</comment><comment><USER45> Doesn't sound like the $850M went missing, more like someone cashed out. Unless hiring a company to do what you say your company is doing, then handing it all your funds immediately, allows any other conclusion.

<comment><USER46> I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion. Bitfinex sent $850M to allow withdrawals to be paid, but very few, if any, were. Witness communications like "you said this would be resolved, but that was a month ago, and not a single wire transfer has taken place".

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> > _The attorney general said Bitfinex's problems began in 2018, when it handed > over $850 million to third-party payments processor Crypto Capital Corp. to > handle customers-withdrawal requests. Over the months that followed, Panama- > based Crypto Capital failed to process the orders, the attorney general > said._

For all the noise about Tether being insolvent, it turns out that it was completely solvent? Then in 2018, Bitfinex got taken by Crypto Capital and raided the Tether reserves for $850M backing the Tether issuance?

So if I'm reading this right: The holders of tether are now screwed and should be converting to bitcoin/litecoin/etc asap.

<comment><USER48> > For all the noise about Tether being insolvent, it turns out that it was > completely solvent?

I don't think this says that; it says that the ~$2bn in tether had at least $700 million in actual backing, because at least that much was transferred out of it's backing.

It still could have been insufficiently backed to start with.

<comment><USER47> To repeat the other reply:

The primary suspicion about tether was lack of solvency, and the [edit: CFTC] subpoena went out in late 2017. It would not have taken more than some weeks to determine if the assets were not present.

It's pretty hard to imagine the AG sat on tether insolvency for 18 months.

<comment><USER48> > The primary suspicion about tether was lack of solvency, and the subpoena > went out in late 2017

Per the court filing, the investigation of Bitfinex and Tether began in 2018 and the subpoena went out on November 27, 2018.

<comment><USER47> We're apparently talking about two different subpoenas.

CFTC subpoenaed Tether back in 2017: See eg [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4hW_8L...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4hW_8LK03JcJ:https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-30/crypto- exchange-bitfinex-tether-said-to-get-subpoenaed-by- cftc+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

<comment><USER48> So...the CFTC isn't a State of New York agency, so what does this have to do with the reading into a New York AG action that Tether must have been solvent otherwise the AG wouldn't have sat on information since then?

(Also, the CFTC and US DoJ investigations were still active at least as recently as November of 2018, which doesn't sound like they found that things were A-OK, more like they were—and presumably still are—trying to nail down the details and responsibility/liability issues surrounding identified irregularities.)

<comment><USER47> > _So...the CFTC isn 't a State of New York agency, so what does this have to > do with the reading into a New York AG action that Tether must have been > solvent otherwise the AG wouldn't have sat on information since then?_

Because it's pretty hard to imagine the CFTC would not have communicated with the NY AG if they had the info about Tether's insolvency. Also hard to imagine NY AG not contacting CFTC before filing.

> _(Also, the CFTC and US DoJ investigations were still active at least as > recently as November of 2018, which doesn 't sound like they found that > things were A-OK, more like they were—and presumably still are—trying to > nail down the details and responsibility/liability issues surrounding > identified irregularities.)_

Again, with regard to insolvency, it's pretty hard to imagine CFTC would allow Tether to continue operations for more than a year if they had evidence of insolvency.

<comment><USER48> > Because it's pretty hard to imagine the CFTC would not have communicated > with the NY AG if they had the info about Tether's insolvency

It's also pretty hard to imagine that, in filing their own case, the NY AG would reveal sensitive information about a still-active federal investigation, but that's your apparent theory.

> it's pretty hard to imagine CFTC would allow Tether to continue operations > for more than a year if they had evidence of insolvency.

It's pretty easy to imagine that of taking action would in any endanger the ongoing DoJ criminal investigation that it would hold back; it's worth noting that the ongoing law enforcement investigation exemption was among the exemptions CFTC cited in June of last year in declining to provide documents in response to an FOIA request about the Tether-related subpoena.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Isn't this the same exchange that got hacked, and socialized the losses throughout their customer accounts? They've been shady on many fronts for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER50> Anybody who read about the connection between Tether and Bitfinex when the paradise papers came out saw this coming.

</comment><comment><USER51> Tether was questionable since day one. They never really substantiated their claim of full-backing through a real audit of their currency reserves. Tether was the successor to Realcoin which was backed by Brock Pierce. Brock Pierce is co-founder of EOS which had the 4 billion dollar ICO.

</comment><comment><USER52> Next crypto bubble: people mass-bailing out tether by exchanging it for Bitcoin, Litecoin, etc.

<comment><USER53> Yes people exchanging their worthless asset (tether) for bitcoin so they can sell it for real USD.

BTC-USDT -> infinity BTC-USD -> much lower

</comment></comment><comment> village-idiot About time. Bitfinex has been suspected of serious fraud for at least a year.

</comment><comment><USER54> which shouldn't in principle affect Bitcoin which is decentralized and trustless if some third party private companies fail.

</comment><comment><USER55> And yet tether is still hovering near $1...

<comment><USER56> Any existing peg can be maintained, until it can't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Since the WSJ is hard-paywalled, we've updated the link from [https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitfinex-used-tether- reserves-t...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitfinex-used-tether-reserves-to- mask-missing-850-million-probe-finds-11556227031). We're happy to update it again if someone can suggest a better source!

<comment><USER58> WSJ isn't hard-paywalled though, just add "?mod=rsswn" to the end of the URL and open in a private window, here try it for yourself: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitfinex-used-tether- reserves-t...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitfinex-used-tether-reserves-to- mask-missing-850-million-probe-finds-11556227031?mod=rsswn)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The article:

A cryptocurrency exchange that claims real dollars back its popular digital coin Tether raided those reserves to cover up $850 million that went missing, the New York Attorney General's office said Thursday.

State Attorney General Letitia James said Hong Kong-based iFinex Inc., which operates the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange and owns Tether Ltd., has been commingling client and corporate funds to cover up the missing funds, which occurred in mid-2018 and hadn't been disclosed publicly.

The attorney general's office said it has obtained a court order directing iFinex to stop moving money from Tether's reserves to Bitfinex's bank accounts, halt any dividends or other distributions to executives and turn over documents and information. The coverup drained at least $700 million from Tether's reserves, according to the attorney general's office.

Attorneys for iFinex didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, and representatives of Bitfinex and Tether weren't immediately available.

The attorney general's findings emerged from an investigation into cryptocurrency exchanges that it launched in 2018 and is continuing. A report in September warned that many exchanges lacked basic safeguards and left consumers vulnerable to exploitation by market manipulators.

A so-called stablecoin, Tether is purportedly backed one-to-one by U.S. dollars. Yet the firm has never released a public audit showing it has the reserves to back the coins in circulation, leading many to question whether the funds exist.

Tether has marketed the coin as a way to get both the safety of the dollar and the speed and anonymity of a digital currency. Its market value has risen steadily over the past two years, to $2.8 billion from about $10 million at the beginning of 2017.

It has become a major source of liquidity in the cryptocurrency market. About 80% of all bitcoin trading is done in Tether, according to data from research site CryptoCompare.

The attorney general said Bitfinex's problems began in 2018, when it handed over $850 million to third-party payments processor Crypto Capital Corp. to handle customers-withdrawal requests. Over the months that followed, Panama- based Crypto Capital failed to process the orders, the attorney general said.

Representatives of Crypto Capital weren't immediately available for comment.

By November of that year, according to people close to the attorney general's investigation, Bitfinex determined that it had permanently lost access to the $850 million. To hide the missing funds, Bitfinex and Tether engaged in a series of maneuvers that drained Tether's reserves, the people said.

A gap of that size would represent a major portion of Tether's reserves. Tether currently claims on its website that the coins it issues are backed by reserves that include currency, cash equivalents and other assets and receivables. The language was altered in March; it previously claimed the reserves were 100% in currency.

<comment><USER59> This reads like 850M just went straight to some entity in Panama.

"Missing". Please.

Conveniently, in Panama too.

<comment><USER48> > This reads like 850M just went straight to some entity in Panama

No, it was around $1bn, $851m is just what Bitfinex lost access to when the entity spun out the "all the money we were holding for you got seized by various governments so we can't handle your payouts" line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> It's almost like unregulated financial institutions have a tendency to screw over their customers... No one could have predicted this in the consistently solvent, regulated, and trustworthy cryptocurrency market. It's too bad bitfinex got ripped off by a surely unrelated entity. /s

Have we learned our lesson yet?

<comment><USER61> What's the lesson? That cryptocurrencies have different risks than other kinds of financial technologies? I think that is pretty commonly understood already.

<comment><USER62> > That cryptocurrencies have different risks than other kinds of financial > technologies?

These are known risks that have regulations that significantly reduce the chance of them happening in regulated currency markets and banks.

Cryptos took the Wild West approach due to... something... and somehow think that the scams that people have used in the past with banks will not be used again with crypto.

SURPRISE!!!

<comment><USER61> > somehow think that the scams that people have used in the past with banks > will not be used again with crypto. SURPRISE!!!

But nobody thinks that. That's the point I was just making.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> The usual blog when it comes to Bitfinex.

[https://medium.com/@bitfinexed](https://medium.com/@bitfinexed)

<comment><USER64> Alex Jones too... The majority of this blog is just conspiracy-p0rn.

Anyway, if you are really interested in actual related news and facts just follow [https://www.theblockcrypto.com](https://www.theblockcrypto.com) or similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Everyone agree's that tether should have a 1-to-1 backing.

The delicious irony in it all is that the money in your bank is backed by about $0.10 for every dollar they owe savers.

I hope for the day when people expect the same of the banking system that underpins the whole economy.

<comment><USER65> There's a huge difference: Yes, the bank only holds $0.10 in cash, but at least in the US, the F.D.I.C. backs up every dollar in your bank account up to $250,000. That's a major reason the reserve banking system functions.

If there were an F.D.I.C. for tether then I'm sure people would have different expectations (and likewise, if there were no F.D.I.C. for the US banking system).

<comment><USER5> The FDIC is more a feel-good measure:

>"Currently, the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF), which is a fund set aside to cover the insurance obligations of the FDIC, has a required reserve ratio of only 1.35%. And that is only after a decision was made in October of 2015 to raise it, from its original level of 1.15%. Even more daunting, the DIF has until 2020 to reach this new 1.35% required reserve level. This means that, using the newly designated 1.35%, the DIF is only required by law to have $3375 on hand for every $250,000 it is currently insuring. Feeling secure? And, sadly, the reality is even less reassuring.

On a macro scale, the FDIC currently "insures" $10.8 trillion of deposits, yet the DIF only has $52 billion of actual cash with which to insure that massive amount of money. Quite a massive shortfall, and well below the measly 1.35% that it is required by law to maintain." [http://www.escapeartist.com/assetprotection/what-does- fdic-i...](http://www.escapeartist.com/assetprotection/what-does-fdic-insured- really-mean/)

In the end the fed can print the dollars too, at the expense of inflation... but who knows what schemes they have come up with.

<comment><USER66> > _The FDIC is more a feel-good measure_

No, it isn't. If the FDIC busts, the government would step in to back it up. Moreover, the FDIC's oversight keeps bank failures to a tiny fraction of the alternative, which we can now measure in the massive rates of fraud and failure around cryptocurrencies.

<comment><USER5> The FDIC and other schemes to intervene in the case of bad banks allows banks to get so huge they can't be allowed to fail. Then everyone needs to pay for the idiots who put their money into bad banks.

In fact, it becomes smart to put your money in these poorly run banks since they will make more money on riskier activities but get bailed out when the same fail...

Many people are dissatisfied with this situation.

<comment><USER66> > _Many people are dissatisfied with this situation_

As am I. But the carnage in cryptocurrencies is a reminder that the _status quo_ beats anarchy or random stabs in the dark.

A human tendency with inefficient systems is to throw out the baby with the bathwater. There are reasonable discussions to be had around reforming and renewing the FDIC to be more friendly to new entrants.

<comment><USER5> >"As am I. But the carnage in cryptocurrencies is a reminder that the status quo beats anarchy or random stabs in the dark."

The situation with bad cryptocurrency exchanges failing does not remind me of that at all. It is far superior since only the people who leave their money in the bad exchanges get punished.

Under your preferred system I get held hostage even though I can see clearly something is wrong.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I Launched a Product and Landed a Deal with Walmart - <AUTHOR> https://starterstory.com/stories/how-i-launched-a-product-and-landed-a-deal-with-walmart <comment><USER2> This is a really neat product I will add the following.

Years ago when I wrote algorithms to optimize inventory for consumer package goods companies I regularly heard a particular saying.

"Getting I'm to Walmart is easy staying in at Walmart is hard"

Large companies like Walmart experiment with products all the time. They are also masters at squeezing their suppliers to minimize cost and force the speed of delivery into their supply chain. People are generally surprised to realize how easy it might be to land a 10,000$ plus contract with Walmart. The real measurement within the industry is to ask how many re-orders have you been able to support while still maintaining a profitable business.

A follow up to this article a couple years from now will be really fascinating.

</comment><comment><USER3> Completely off topic, but it's become clear that English teachers have harassed people so much about using "me" vs "I", that it's defacto been replaced by "myself". It should be "shipped to me", not "shipped to myself".

If you find yourself writing "myself" you should stop to check because "me" is much more common.

</comment><comment><USER4> Congrats on launching.

Plus points if you can use bio degradable packaging.

We produce enough plastic waste already and making it biodegradable might be a good marketing point as well.

</comment><comment><USER5> Your idea is actually genius. Nice job!</comment>