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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

#411

Post by jonknee »

stanleydrew wrote: post #410
jonknee wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The easiest is probably through a stock broker. Futures are risky (typically highly levered, though less so for BTC) and they usually make you have a decent chunk of change before they'll give you access.

I have a few brokerage accounts at a few places (Fidelity, E-Trade, Vanguard). Haven't done much margin trading and never worked with futures (done a little with options) so I just don't know what to look for in the interfaces. Is there a "ticker symbol" that represents a future contract for Bitcoin? Are there multiple parties offering such contracts? Is there a broker that you know of who's currently offering these…

You would need to be specifically approved for futures, E-Trade definitely supports it (and the BTC contracts):

https://us.etrade.com/what-we-offer/investment-choices/futur...

Two futures exchanges run Bitcoin contracts, CME (trading under BTC) and CBOE (trading under XBT). They're not a lot different outside of size, CME's contract represents 5 bitcoins while CBOE's represents 1. Here's a decent listing of the differences:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bitcoin-futures-contracts...

It's definitely worth reading up on how futures work before trading them, but it's similar to stocks in terms of using a ticker[1] and making buy/sell orders. A key difference is margin, but with the volatility of bitcoin both exchanges have really high margin limits so you can't get into too much trouble. The other key difference is you're trading a specific month so you need to be more correct on timing than you would for a stock.

[1] The tickers work a little different than stocks in that the root is XBT or BTC, but the full symbol for the contract includes the month and year. This is similar to options. Your trading platform should make this clear.

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

#412

Post by zaroth »

oculusthrift wrote: post #302
zaroth wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably GDAX...? I’m sure it wouldn’t be as smooth as pushing buttons and they would likely want something stating where you got the coins.

yeah they only let most people withdraw 10k a day. some guy owed millions on taxes but couldn’t withdraw it fast enough to pay..

Haha presumably if you’re wiring the money directly to the US Treasury they would make an exception!

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

#413

Post by tripzilch »

bobjordan wrote: post #375
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A foreign bank can hold USD without any US oversight If they hold it as hard cash, practically, sure. If they want to be allowed to send or receive wires and generally not get sanctioned by the United States, no. The U.S. Treasury claims international jurisdiction over U.S. dollars [1]. [1] https://cblr.columbia.edu/the-u-s-jurisdiction-over-transfer...

Definitely have suprising powers. I once sent a wire payment in USD from my Hong Kong company’s HSBC business bank account directly to my China company’s bank inside China, where my bank in China would convert it to renminbi. I was shocked to find out the bank wire was somehow held up in NYC! Blew my mind. Nothing to do with the USA in this transaction, except the USD. The reason the wire was held up? I had wrote the…

... because actual illegal arms dealers would write "Grenade" in the notes field of a bank wire? :)

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

#414

Post by 0wing »

tripzilch wrote: post #413
bobjordan wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely have suprising powers. I once sent a wire payment in USD from my Hong Kong company’s HSBC business bank account directly to my China company’s bank inside China, where my bank in China would convert it to renminbi. I was shocked to find out the bank wire was somehow held up in NYC! Blew my mind. Nothing to do with the USA in this transaction, except the USD. The reason the wire was held up? I had wrote the…

... because actual illegal arms dealers would write "Grenade" in the notes field of a bank wire? :)

some contractor sold some an artificial intelligence predictive crime product to catch baddies somewhere in that pipeline

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

#415

Post by s73ver_ »

darawk wrote: post #293
s73ver_ wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot believe that, especially with that line in their TOS. Saying, "They're only saying that to skirt the law!" doesn't make things any better.

Well, it may not make things better from a moral perspective, but it does make things better from a value-of-tether perspective.

No, it very much doesn’t. If they’re willing to skirt laws for that, what makes you think they won’t skirt you?

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

#416

Post by darawk »

s73ver_ wrote: post #415
darawk wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it may not make things better from a moral perspective, but it does make things better from a value-of-tether perspective.

No, it very much doesn’t. If they’re willing to skirt laws for that, what makes you think they won’t skirt you?

You seem to be binarizing a non-binary thing. If they are financially insolvent that is objectively worse than if they have routed around some banking laws. The probability of repayment on one is much greater than the other.

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

#417

Post by antonvs »

seppel wrote: post #386
antonvs wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How does it explain that Tether is printing more and more Tethers? The demand for Tethers is high because the demand to be able to trade is high. > Do you think more and more people are selling BTC for USDT for a "short term"? More and more people have been getting involved in trading as the price of Bitcoin and other cryptos was spiking. Now those people are in the market, but Bitcoin has been dropping. It makes s…

> It's also possible that There's are being used fraudulently to pump BTC. My point is: How can you pump BTC with USDT? You need somebody to buy your USDT if you want to sell USDT. In fact, you need somebody to buy an enormous amout of USDT if you want to pump BTC. Pumping BTC is not a one sided thing, and I fail to understand the other side. What I get from this thread is that that nobody really knows who is buying…

The people buying USDT are people trading cryptocurrency. There are many exchanges (probably most) that don't deal with USD, so USDT or other Tether varieties are the only way to execute trades that approximate trading fiat currencies for pure cryptocurrencies.

I think you may not realize how large the market has become. The top 6 biggest exchanges are currently trading more than $10 billion worth of cryptocurrencies daily, and there are many more that trade $100s of millions daily.

If that volume is sustained (it reached a peak recently with the price spike), it would put the annual trading volume well into the trillions, perhaps around $5 trillion.

100 million USDT per week seems pretty reasonable (if not small) to support that kind of activity.

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

#418

Post by FireBeyond »

darawk wrote: post #360
FireBeyond wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taiwanese domestic wires of all sizes have been flowing unimpeded this whole time. Your only knowledge of this is based on "surely we'd hear of people complaining on English language forums if they weren't able to". And at the very least, if you do wish to do anything, you are required to maintain at least $10,000 USD (not USDT) and wait for up to 12 weeks for verification.

Yes, that is correct. But I think that's a pretty reasonable provision. Taiwan has internet, and people from Taiwan trade Bitcoin.

How does that equate to a relatively proficient level of English?

At least a cursory search of English fluency says that if there are complaints (or compliments) on Bitfinex, most users are certainly not going to be posting them on English-language forums.

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

#419

Post by notyourday »

notyourday wrote: post #402
Mtinie wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can request an increase to your limits. For a customer with a large, verified portfolio I’m sure Coinbase would work with you if you needed to move funds in large amounts. It may not be overnight, and there may be additional fees, but it’s not going to take 100’s of days to move $1M unless you aren’t trying very hard.

My bank does not need to work with me to send a multimillion dollar wire. They only care that (a) i am already a customer and they have verified that I'm me. (b) i have completed all needed forms before (c) i have followed the authorization protocol, including verification via control phone number registered with the bank and controlled authorization code Same goes for any brokerage.

I totally dig the downvotes. They keep illustrating that the voting population of HN does not know much about what it takes to run a business and what those who run businesses know to be an undeniable truths.

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

#420

Post by Mtinie »

notyourday wrote: post #402
Mtinie wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can request an increase to your limits. For a customer with a large, verified portfolio I’m sure Coinbase would work with you if you needed to move funds in large amounts. It may not be overnight, and there may be additional fees, but it’s not going to take 100’s of days to move $1M unless you aren’t trying very hard.

My bank does not need to work with me to send a multimillion dollar wire. They only care that (a) i am already a customer and they have verified that I'm me. (b) i have completed all needed forms before (c) i have followed the authorization protocol, including verification via control phone number registered with the bank and controlled authorization code Same goes for any brokerage.

Have an upvote.

You are correct, but even banks and brokerages have limits (AFAIK) that they can invoke as needed.

Those soft-caps are significantly above $10k/daily, however.

My main point was with Coinbase you can do the required prework to request the higher daily limits and receive similar service, but you need to think about it in advance vs. having it automatically in place.

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