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Tether price manipulation

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Re: Tether price manipulation

#71
post #65
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that sort of language annoys me and is often a sign the writer doesn't really understand what's going on. There are two possible phenomena: Legit: US$ are sent to tether, tethers are issued in exchange 1:1 and then used to buy bitcoin. This will tend to raise the price of bitcoin but only as long as people are sending real US$ Illegit: tether insiders just issue tethers without US$ backing, use them to buy bitco…

The thing I don't understand about the "Illegit" method is that it relies on people accepting USDT for BTC and then not cashing them out to real USD. Because if the company is printing USDT it wouldn't have the cash to pay the people trying to cash out USDT. So to allow this to happen you would need a people to be holding a huge amount of USDT.

You can’t redeem Tether — that’s a core part of the fraud, they have “banking issues” and had them for years. You can sell it on an exchange but the Tether organisation have prevented any redemption of USD from USDT for years. Anybody turning USDT into USD is selling their USDT.

Re: Tether price manipulation

#72
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can buy BTC with the newly minted coins.

This makes zero sense. Why not just use USD? The entire point of Tether seems to be that it is always valued to be exactly 1:1 with USD. And that seems to somehow convince people that entities who cannot obtain a loan of USD can obtain a loan of Tether?

[deleted]

Re: Tether price manipulation

#74
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

"Nobody" is an exaggeration. There is a big community of enthusiasts who enjoy cryptocurrencies for what they are and enable, not for their USD value in the markets.

Re: Tether price manipulation

#75
post #65
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that sort of language annoys me and is often a sign the writer doesn't really understand what's going on. There are two possible phenomena: Legit: US$ are sent to tether, tethers are issued in exchange 1:1 and then used to buy bitcoin. This will tend to raise the price of bitcoin but only as long as people are sending real US$ Illegit: tether insiders just issue tethers without US$ backing, use them to buy bitco…

The thing I don't understand about the "Illegit" method is that it relies on people accepting USDT for BTC and then not cashing them out to real USD. Because if the company is printing USDT it wouldn't have the cash to pay the people trying to cash out USDT. So to allow this to happen you would need a people to be holding a huge amount of USDT.

People do hold USDT. I hold some myself. If you are going to buy crypto again it saves the hassle and expense of converting into fiat money and back again.

The majority of exchanges can't actually hold fiat money due to regulatory issues.

Also I imagine some people are hoping to avoid the taxman by keeping it in crypto though that's legally not kosher.

Re: Tether price manipulation

#76

Wait I don't get it, it's not fully backed but it's still backed somewhat right? I thought it was only a chunk of USD that was missing? Or did they completely abandon the usd backing? If it's still somewhat backed and just that chunk of usd that remains unaccounted for, printing tether isn't exactly a scam? People trade their usd for printed tethers and use that to buy bitcoin, so it's still essentially people exchan…

no-one knows how backed it is. iFinex claim it's 100% backed. They may, or may not, be telling the truth. The question is do you believe that billions of dollars are flowing into an unaudited stablecoin when other, audited, stablecoins exist...

In 2019 Tether's lawyer was talking about 74% backed by cash and "short-term securities".

Edit: I forgot to add the link, here it is https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-30/tether-sa...

Re: Tether price manipulation

#77
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is true. It's also the tremendous irony of bitcoin evangelists narrative that fiat is worthless yet constantly touting every ATH (which is priced in that supposedly worthless fiat). Who cares what BTCUSD is if USD worthless? And then you realize that this is pure speculation and the most ardent supporters are just praying for the greater fool theory to rain good fortune on them. You need look no further than Coi…

The vast, vast majority of "bitcoin evangelists" couldn't care less about the actual mechanics of Bitcoin. They don't care that it was created as a digital F-You to fiat currency, and they don't care that it enables you to be your own bank. Just look at /r/bitcoin. It's 99% price/hodl memes, and 1% posts about the protocol & enhancements to the protocol itself.

Re: Tether price manipulation

#78
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s not individuals buying Tether from Bitfinex and then buying Bitcoin that causes this. It is Bitfinex as an organization ‘printing’ free money and using it to pump the market.

Re: Tether price manipulation

#80

I still don't quite understand how they can manipulate the price. The price of a USDT is 1 dollar. They give out new USDT for $1 a piece. Sure, they may be spending these dollars elsewhere, thus holding a fractional reserve. Sure this may illegal and get them in trouble. But this doesn't effect the dollar value for which these USDT's and thus Bitcoins are traded. As long as a USDT is $1, nobody is manipulating the pr…

Well, what if you use those reserves to buy bitcoin on your own exchange?
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