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Tether price manipulation

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Re: Tether price manipulation

#41
post #30

The graphs show a strong correlation between printing of USDT and the Bitcoin price rising, but it's not clear to me which one triggers the other. Interestingly, USDC seems to follow similar minting patterns, and they post quarterly audits of their books / are much better regulated.

They are better regulated and therefore less risky than Tether, which raises the interesting question, Why is USDC circulation only 20% of Tethers...

I agree, and it does surprise me, but I think it's a mix of 1. tether has been around a lot longer and is on a lot more exchanges 2. tether is.. less well controlled by US regulators and hence better for.. questionable exchanges to list.

Re: Tether price manipulation

#42

Surely the only way to keep the valuer of tether stable is to "print" more of it whenever its value starts to increase? Otherwise it wouldn't be always worth $1.

Tethers only value is as a proxy for the dollar, as such it can only ever be worth a dollar. The exceptions are when a market is crashing people would rather have dollars, and we will see prices above a dollar due to high demand - though the intrinsic value should never change.

Re: Tether price manipulation

#43
post #32

The problem is that in the early days of @Bitfinex'ed this was all a bit of a sideshow because there was genuinely large interest from retail and the outcome of crypto was far less certain. However three years on, crypto still does not have a "killer app" and is 99.99% used for speculation. Bitcoin's narrative has had to morph from "digital currency" to "digital gold". But in the depths of the March panic, Tether jum…

1 BTC will still be 1 BTC after the Tether scam and scammers are all history.

Perhaps we can go back to buying a pizza for 1 BTC when this is all over.

Re: Tether price manipulation

#44
post #18
post #2

While correlation is not causation, correlation is evidence for causation... and there's a lot of correlation in those graphs.

Correlation is definitely not evidence for causation. Also, if you reverse the cause and effect, what analysis do you get? When BTC prices are in the rise, it’s because people are putting money into crypto currencies. When people are putting money into crypto, some of that money is probably going into tether, so there’s more demand for tether, so Bitfinex increases the supply. With this reasoning, we get exactly the…

> Correlation is definitely not evidence for causation.

Try telling this to climate change activists

Re: Tether price manipulation

#45
post #32

The problem is that in the early days of @Bitfinex'ed this was all a bit of a sideshow because there was genuinely large interest from retail and the outcome of crypto was far less certain. However three years on, crypto still does not have a "killer app" and is 99.99% used for speculation. Bitcoin's narrative has had to morph from "digital currency" to "digital gold". But in the depths of the March panic, Tether jum…

1 BTC will still be 1 BTC after the Tether scam and scammers are all history.

You're not wrong, it's just that nobody cares about BTC itself, but only about its value relative to USD.

Crypto is not a currency but an investment product; can we please just accept that and talk about it for what it is?

Re: Tether price manipulation

#46
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are better regulated and therefore less risky than Tether, which raises the interesting question, Why is USDC circulation only 20% of Tethers...

I agree, and it does surprise me, but I think it's a mix of 1. tether has been around a lot longer and is on a lot more exchanges 2. tether is.. less well controlled by US regulators and hence better for.. questionable exchanges to list.

Challenge there is that it doesn't fit the narrative that Tether give about the demand being from "institutional investors". That kind of customer tends (IMO) to be very risk averse.

Of course it is possible that Tether are getting custom, but not the kind that wants to leave a bank trail. But if that's the case they're going to fall foul of the regulators sooner or later...

Re: Tether price manipulation

#47
post #34

Can someone please explain to me how Tether is "injected" into Bitcoin? The entire argument seems to hinge on this but it is not (as far as I can see) explained. Are people accepting Tether in trade for BTC under the assumption that Tether will always be exchanged 1:1 for USD when this is not actually the case? EDIT: The answer seems to be yes Tether is 1-to-1 with "I O U $1" and enough people are accepting these IOU…

So far the explanation I’ve come across goes as follows: someone creates tether. They use this tether to buy bitcoin, which drives up the prices of bitcoin. The more they buy, the more value their purchased bitcoin has. The trick seems to be that generating this tether should decrease the value of tether, however since everyone thinks its a stablecoin that is backed by usd 1:1, its value remains the same. The worst i…

I've gathered basically this same explanation but it still makes no sense.

Are people trading BTC for "Land for sale on the moon" too?

This sounds like exchanges handing out IOUs instead of money when their patrons try to cash out.

Re: Tether price manipulation

#48
post #30

The graphs show a strong correlation between printing of USDT and the Bitcoin price rising, but it's not clear to me which one triggers the other. Interestingly, USDC seems to follow similar minting patterns, and they post quarterly audits of their books / are much better regulated.

They are better regulated and therefore less risky than Tether, which raises the interesting question, Why is USDC circulation only 20% of Tethers...

Almost as if crypto is mostly about investment speculation and gambling, and not so much about actually useful assets.

Re: Tether price manipulation

#49
post #30

The graphs show a strong correlation between printing of USDT and the Bitcoin price rising, but it's not clear to me which one triggers the other. Interestingly, USDC seems to follow similar minting patterns, and they post quarterly audits of their books / are much better regulated.

They are better regulated and therefore less risky than Tether, which raises the interesting question, Why is USDC circulation only 20% of Tethers...

Have you considered the fact that "better regulated" might not be an advantage for someone using it as a capital flight tool? A big value proposition of Tether as an on-ramp is its discretion.

Re: Tether price manipulation

#50

I'm kinda glad BTC is up, this means I can do an exit with break even or a little profit. I just sold half my crypto assets on the two exchanges I have an account on, I just hope I can have the money transferred out before they become insolvent when the next great crash happens.

Good for you, parts of mine are stuck on CoinBase and the support isn't answering for days. Seems i'm not alone with that issue.
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