Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tether (USDT) price falling to $0.95

coinmarketcap.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 95 posts

Re: Tether (USDT) price falling to $0.95

#41

Post by [deleted] »

caf wrote: post #15
michaelt wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they think the bitcoin price is going to shoot up 3xin the coming months so using their money to buy tether would be pretty stupid in that case no? For Tether to be backed by US$, for every 1 USDT they need to hold $1 in cash or cash equivalents. If they have invested the fiat in bitcoins, they aren't backed by US$ any more.

This is right - Tether buying back their USDT means that they get to retire 1 USDT for 0.95c of their backing reserves, turning the remaining 0.05c into profit which they can then invest wherever they want.

[deleted]

Re: Tether (USDT) price falling to $0.95

#42

Post by JumpCrisscross »

deckar01 wrote: post #33
Tsubasachan wrote: post #29

I always found it amusing bitcoin needs to be backed by USD. Wasn't the whole BTC religion about how bad and unstable traditional currencies are? Meanwhile no central bank is trying to save Tether.

It's not about backing with value, it's about liquidity. Traders want to use USD assets on a market and be able to transfer them as a digital asset between exchanges with minimal 3rd party fees. Transferring USD through a bank account can be expensive.

> Transferring USD through a bank account can be expensive

I keep hearing this, yet can instantly and for no charge electronically transfer under $10,000 between various accounts, and with minimal (often waived) wire charges, much larger quantities more reliably (and with less risk) than using a "stable coin".

Re: Tether (USDT) price falling to $0.95

#43

Post by wyldfire »

jpatokal wrote: post #19

I built this site in February this year in anticipation: http://www.untether.space/ The spread between Bitcoin priced in Tether and Bitcoin priced in USD has been holding steady at For the curious, source at https://github.com/jpatokal/untether and also submitted as a Show HN at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18219034 .

The graph is tough to read as is. There's no labels for the x data and they y is autoranged. As of 1020 Eastern US time today, all I see are two horizontal lines. So I can see that both the Tether/Bitfinex/Bittrex/Poloniex cluster and the USD/Bitstamp/Kraken clusters are stable. But without an x label I can't tell if they're stable over the last hour, month, or year.

* If I mouse-over the x ticks, I can see that the graph spans ~10 minutes, but most people probably wouldn't have the patience. Now that I know it's been stable for ten minutes (is it usually unstable across ten minutes‽), my next question is 'how did it look over the last 30 days? 12 months? *

All in all, a cool site! Just a tip from the graph-nitpickers out here.

EDIT: I see now, this graph shows only current activity since page load. This was likely a tradeoff to simplify the design of the page such that the data didn't have to be stored on the server. Maybe the page is such that the data is requested directly from the exchanges themselves?

Re: Tether (USDT) price falling to $0.95

#44

Post by ceejayoz »

TylerE wrote: post #37
zamadatix wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$2,000,000,000+ worth issued without proof of backing? What value did Tether add that people were willing to deal with it as a middleman to dollars? Side note: The graph could use some TLC. The colors are indistinguishable and there are no static historical charts on the page, just the graph since my visit.

That is could be used to avoid all those annoying banking laws (AML, KYC, etc).

(Maybe.)

Re: Tether (USDT) price falling to $0.95

#45

Post by specialp »

lewisflude wrote: post #2

Isn't this an easy opportunity for arbitrage? Assuming it goes back up to $1. I thought that was the whole point of fiat-backed crypto?

If one was able to convert it directly to 1 USD immediately then yes it would be a super easy arbitrage and the price of Tether would never fluctuate from 1 USD more than very small amounts (which would be arbitraged and restored) The problem is that you can't do that, and the pricing is indicating that the market no longer believes that Tether is worth 1 USD, so isn't willing to pay that much.

Re: Tether (USDT) price falling to $0.95

#46

Post by Alex3917 »

nosuchthing wrote: post #12
lewisflude wrote: post #2

Isn't this an easy opportunity for arbitrage? Assuming it goes back up to $1. I thought that was the whole point of fiat-backed crypto?

How? It’s been a long standing allegation that tether is a fraud, counterfeited by Bitfinex to manipulate the spot price in a scheme to steal bitcoins (buying BTC with free tether printing).. [1][2] The telltale sign of a bankrun at Bitfinex seems to be playing out, as you can see the spot price rises on Bitfinex meanwhile on other exchanges BTC spot price drops. Coinciding with the drop in USD:USDT pair losing its p…

> The telltale sign of a bankrun at Bitfinex seems to be playing out, as you can see the spot price rises on Bitfinex meanwhile on other exchanges BTC spot price drops.

As also evidenced by the fact that the price of all other crypto assets is going up, meaning that people are dumping Tether at a loss to buy other stuff at inflated prices.

Re: Tether (USDT) price falling to $0.95

#47

Post by andrewla »

A note on the price reported by coinmarketcap -- that is a price derived from computing the average traded price of USDT across all exchanges, including ones that have no path to converting directly to USD.

What this means is that this dramatically overstates the price of tether. If you navigate to "market" [1] and change the "Pair" dropdown to "USD" you'll see the three exchanges that actually offer the pair. Bitfinex is the sponsor of Tether, so will always say $1; but currently they are apparently having banking problems.

Kraken and Bittrex offer independent markets so are a better fair reflection of the price, in the sense of "if you have tether, and want foldin' money right now, this is the current discount". Kraken has somewhat limited withdrawal capabilities at the moment as well, so their price also reflects a premium for the latency.

[1] https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/#markets

Re: Tether (USDT) price falling to $0.95

#49

Post by bmh »

zamadatix wrote: post #34
jpatokal wrote: post #19

I built this site in February this year in anticipation: http://www.untether.space/ The spread between Bitcoin priced in Tether and Bitcoin priced in USD has been holding steady at For the curious, source at https://github.com/jpatokal/untether and also submitted as a Show HN at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18219034 .

$2,000,000,000+ worth issued without proof of backing? What value did Tether add that people were willing to deal with it as a middleman to dollars? Side note: The graph could use some TLC. The colors are indistinguishable and there are no static historical charts on the page, just the graph since my visit.

A major use of USDT is that you can sell your cryptos when they're high, converting them to USDT, which holds it's value. Then, when the crypto prices drop, you buy in again, and repeat. By keeping it entirely in the crypto space, your country's tax system can't charge you for capital gains.

Re: Tether (USDT) price falling to $0.95

#50

Post by charlietango92 »

bmh wrote: post #49
zamadatix wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$2,000,000,000+ worth issued without proof of backing? What value did Tether add that people were willing to deal with it as a middleman to dollars? Side note: The graph could use some TLC. The colors are indistinguishable and there are no static historical charts on the page, just the graph since my visit.

A major use of USDT is that you can sell your cryptos when they're high, converting them to USDT, which holds it's value. Then, when the crypto prices drop, you buy in again, and repeat. By keeping it entirely in the crypto space, your country's tax system can't charge you for capital gains.

pardon my ignorance, but wouldn't you eventually convert your USDT to 'real'/fiat currency at some point? It would be taxed then as 'other income' right?
Post reply on HN