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U.S. Regulators to Subpoena Crypto Exchange Bitfinex, Tether

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Re: U.S. Regulators to Subpoena Crypto Exchange Bitfinex, Tether

#241

Post by twinkletwinkle »

HockeyPlayer wrote: post #81

How trustworthy is Kraken? Tether looks like a good short since if it is a fraud it will go way down and if it isn't a fraud it will stay right where it is. I'm in the US and would like to short Tether. But I want to get paid if I'm right.

> and if it isn't a fraud it will stay right where it is

I'm not actually qualified to give investing advice. But this part isn't strictly true. In a functioning market, the price could be depressed by the regulatory uncertainty. If that were the case and it was cleared up, you would see the price rise.

Re: U.S. Regulators to Subpoena Crypto Exchange Bitfinex, Tether

#242

Post by oculusthrift »

jpatokal wrote: post #170
KasianFranks wrote: post #14

This is good news for quality cryptocurrency organizations. Bitfinex has problems, so does Tether and it's good to see bad actors in the crypto world getting weeded out, called out and put down.

In the long term, perhaps, but in the short term there's going to be MtGox-or-worse level carnage in the markets if Bitfinex/USDT is exposed as a scam and people start panic selling to cash out.

if they sell their usdt for btc, the btc price could actually rise. it just depends if they try to withdraw all together and the money leaves the crypto market

Re: U.S. Regulators to Subpoena Crypto Exchange Bitfinex, Tether

#243

Post by spookthesunset »

andrewla wrote: post #230
spookthesunset wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My personal experience, when I could, is that you are never exposed to USDT on the site at all except as an option to transfer your deposited USD to another exchange via tether. One exciting "feature" of all this is that most tickers that price out crypto currency values treat USD and USDT as one and the same. I've yet to see Bitfinex, for example, show up on a ticker as "BTC / USDT" (which is what, in fact, the pa…

There are exchanges (a lot of them, actually) that list USDT as part of a trading pair. Bitfinex, as I understand it, allows withdrawals in USD (modulo the restrictions above). From an end-user perspective, the only time you ever deal with tether is when you make a tether transfer. They are correct in not treating the on-exchange trading pair as BTC/USDT. Just as when you deposit on any exchange, for example, Kraken,…

> Also, when you deposit your USD in Chase Bank, you don't have USD, you have "Chase USD credits" which you can withdraw, subject to their limitations, on demand.

No, I have USD in my account when I deposit to Chase. I can go to Chase and say "give me my fucking money" and they'll give me sweet cold, hard dirty fiat dollars with, in general, no questions asked. I deposited in dollars, my account balance is denoted in dollars, my withdrawals in dollars. 1 USD == 1 USD.

All of these Bitcoin exchanges.... ...... maybe you can do that but good luck..... maybe?????

Unlike a real bank, your "Bitfinex Credit" is actually backed by USDT, not USD. When you go to Bitfinex and say "Give me my fucking money in USD", they'll laugh and point out that you never had USD, you bought something called tether which is. Tether being, of course, the space-age crypto currency that is pegged to the USD using ...$methods.... and has, according to their marketing website, been subjected to "multiple professional audits" (cough).

So what you see on all these ticker sites is a bunch of USDT that is silently folded into the USD marketcap and pricing models people use to make their decisions. All of it assuming USDT is actually legit. If USDT goes south, it is going to fuck over the entire crypto market because almost everything there is now completely mispriced. Worse, there is allegations that USDT was being used to drive up and maintain the current crypto prices... if that is true, crypto is double-fucked because even the underlying valuations are bullshit.

> Bitfinex, as I understand it, allows withdrawals in USD (modulo the restrictions above).

Show me an average joe retail "investor" who has been able to successfully withdraw USD from Bitfinex. People have been asking for that person to stand up and raise their hand for months. Crickets is all you get in response.

Re: U.S. Regulators to Subpoena Crypto Exchange Bitfinex, Tether

#244

Post by gamblor956 »

gruez wrote: post #123
spookthesunset wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can exchange USDT for fiat, on demand, for exactly 1 USD/USDT, but only at Bitfinex My understanding is this isn't the case. My understanding is Bitfinex will take your USD and convert to USDT which you can then use to buy crypto. But it won't take your USDT and turn it back into dollars. In fact, my understanding is the only way to turn USDT back into USD is either directly through Kraken or indirectly through…

> But it won't take your USDT and turn it back into dollars. that's... unlikely. mainly because if that were true, nobody would want to sell anything at bitfinex, and cryptocurrency prices there would skyrocket. this happened at mtgox when they halted withdraws, BTC prices skyrocketed there.

But that is exactly what happened. Bitfinex has not exchanged USDT for dollars since mid-2017.

Re: U.S. Regulators to Subpoena Crypto Exchange Bitfinex, Tether

#245

Post by [deleted] »

GenericsMotors wrote: post #143
HockeyPlayer wrote: post #81

How trustworthy is Kraken? Tether looks like a good short since if it is a fraud it will go way down and if it isn't a fraud it will stay right where it is. I'm in the US and would like to short Tether. But I want to get paid if I'm right.

> How trustworthy is Kraken? They spoof their order books and use wash trading bots...so draw your own conclusions :) Eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz-ziPfP00M

[deleted]

Re: U.S. Regulators to Subpoena Crypto Exchange Bitfinex, Tether

#246

Post by oculusthrift »

twinkletwinkle wrote: post #241
HockeyPlayer wrote: post #81

How trustworthy is Kraken? Tether looks like a good short since if it is a fraud it will go way down and if it isn't a fraud it will stay right where it is. I'm in the US and would like to short Tether. But I want to get paid if I'm right.

> and if it isn't a fraud it will stay right where it is I'm not actually qualified to give investing advice. But this part isn't strictly true. In a functioning market, the price could be depressed by the regulatory uncertainty. If that were the case and it was cleared up, you would see the price rise.

right but it’ll never go over something like 1.04 because it’s supposed to be pegged to a dollar

Re: U.S. Regulators to Subpoena Crypto Exchange Bitfinex, Tether

#247

Post by spookthesunset »

darawk wrote: post #186
thinkmoore wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that their terms of service say that they have no legal obligation to do so, regardless of where you have a bank account...

That's correct. However, in practice, they do do it.

> However, in practice, they do do it.

Anybody been able to actually withdraw cold, hard fiat dollars from tether or bitfinex? Show of hands please?

.... crickets ....

Re: U.S. Regulators to Subpoena Crypto Exchange Bitfinex, Tether

#248

Post by seppel »

achompas wrote: post #182
seppel wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so they printed billions of Tethers and bought BTC with them, I get this part. What I don't get is: This means somebody sold BTC for billions of USDT (instead USD!). Who is doing this? Why would you sell for USDT instead USD? Maybe there some daytraders on the exchanges that go in and out the Tether every day, yeah. But that should not account for that much. Who is hodling that giant pile of USDT? And why?

> Who is doing this? Why would you sell for USDT instead USD? On many international exchanges, USDT are the easiest way to convert BTC to a (supposedly) USD-backed asset.

> On many international exchanges, USDT are the easiest way to convert BTC to a (supposedly) USD-backed asset.

I'm sorry, but I cannot follow.

Let's say you want to sell a BTC, current worth about 10k. So you go to a shady exchange, click sell and 10k of USDT appear in your account.

Good, but what is the next step? The next thing you will notice that there is nothing that you can buy for your USDT. You cannot buy a house, you cannot buy a car, you cannot even buy food. The only thing that you can buy for USDT is BTC (or some other cryptocurrency). This is the only thing you can do next.

And the BTC is even worth more than the USDT, because there are actually people willing to sell you stuff for BTC.

But let's assume for a moment that people are really hodling USDT. This would mean that there is an increasing amount of such people, because Tether is printing more and more and more of USDT. This means there needs to be an increasing demand of USDT, and I really cannot see where this is coming from.

Re: U.S. Regulators to Subpoena Crypto Exchange Bitfinex, Tether

#249

Post by simonebrunozzi »

gressquel wrote: post #30
drcode wrote: post #24

Summary for newbs: Bitfinex is a crypto exchange kinda based in Hong Kong and kind of based in Taiwan (this seems to change depending on convenience.) Taiwan recently started becoming more rigorous about monitoring international USD wires, and lots of Bitfinex users had their money stranded in Taiwan. Bitfinex stopped supporting US customers because of these difficulties (AFAIK most customers did eventually get their…

a little correction. Tether and Bitfinex were exposed in Panama Papers as sister companies. They are not two unrelated as they say they are. Even more reason to stay away from Bitfinex and USDT

Follow the trail related to Bitfinex's CFO (in the Panama papers, and elsewhere).

Pretty interesting findings.

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