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

Tether price manipulation

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 490 posts

Re: Tether price manipulation

#111

Post by mathgenius »

lukebuehler wrote: post #95
qeternity wrote: post #15

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…

I’ve been wondering if Tether is really a scam for a long time. In all these analyses, one key point is missing: arbitrage traders have to make up for the sell pressure on USDT when Tethers are being printed and sold for BTC. Can anyone show me how there is a plausible mechanism/scheme/conspiracy that keeps the USD/USDT exchange rate stable while a crazy amount of illegitimate Tethers are being printed? Edit: typo an…

As long as tether can provide a small percentage of liquidity on USDT/USD then they (arbitrageurs) can maintain the peg. This can obviously break down, and has in the past. It's all about liquidity...

Re: Tether price manipulation

#113

Post by raesene9 »

lukebuehler wrote: post #95
qeternity wrote: post #15

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…

I’ve been wondering if Tether is really a scam for a long time. In all these analyses, one key point is missing: arbitrage traders have to make up for the sell pressure on USDT when Tethers are being printed and sold for BTC. Can anyone show me how there is a plausible mechanism/scheme/conspiracy that keeps the USD/USDT exchange rate stable while a crazy amount of illegitimate Tethers are being printed? Edit: typo an…

If you ignore the URL and read the content of this http://www.tr0lly.com/bitcoin/the-tether-press-and-bitcoins-... it's actually a good theory for what may be happening.

It's speculation, but then without audits and accounts of the exchanges that use Tether, and Tether itself, speculation seems to be about as good an option as there is.

Re: Tether price manipulation

#114

Post by tromp »

dylkil wrote: post #27
qeternity wrote: post #15

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…

>Bitcoin's narrative has had to morph from "digital currency" to "digital gold". This narrative was an intentional morphing by various actors within the space (Blockstream) who believed raising the blocksize to allow higher throughput would cause 'centralisation'. Instead they want people to use layer 2 solutions such as blockstreams own federated product Liquid.

As explained by blockstream co-founder Greg Maxwell in [1], the blocksize is constrained in order to ensure a steady backlog of fee paying transactions, that allow bitcoin to remain secure in the long term when block subsidy becomes insignificant.

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5306354.0

Re: Tether price manipulation

#115

Post by xur17 »

seibelj wrote: post #97
vegannet wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Plenty of companies redeem USDT for USD. I myself worked at a company that redeemed billions of dollars. The FUD on HN is approaching delusional levels.

https://tether.to/faqs/

> Unfortunately, Tether has decided to stop serving U.S. individual and corporate customers altogether. As of January 1, 2018, no issuance or redeeming services will be available to these users. Exceptions to these provisions may be made by Tether, in its sole discretion, for entities that are: Established or organized outside of the United States or its territorial or insular possessions; and, Eligible Contract Participants pursuant to U.S. law.

> An Eligible Contract Participant includes a corporation that has total assets exceeding $10,000,000 and is incorporated in a jurisdiction outside of the United States or its territories or insular possessions. This will be the principal basis upon which we will continue to do business with selected U.S. persons.

Basically, it looks like they only provide on and off ramps for large clients outside the US. Given their history, I am betting they might not want to reveal where they store their assets, and don't want to deal with US regulators (but not sure this is working).

Re: Tether price manipulation

#116

Post by raesene9 »

martinko wrote: post #100
40four wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nonsense. If this were the case then tether could not trade at par.

It could, if the major exchanges accept that it does and continue to back that notion...

Re: Tether price manipulation

#117

Post by peteradio »

martinko wrote: post #100
40four wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nonsense. If this were the case then tether could not trade at par.

(narrator) tether could not trade at par

Re: Tether price manipulation

#118

Post by eecks »

newsclues wrote: post #106
caeril wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely has a killer app. Probably not a big enough app to justify these prices, but one nonetheless. As Stripe, PayPal, Visa, Gofundme, Patreon, et. al. shut down avenues of payments for legal, but unpopular purchases, BTC is the obvious workaround. Vendors of firearms, pornography, legal funds for unpopular causes, dissident content creators, etc have become increasingly estranged from the "normal" payments m…

If BTCs killer app is criminal transactions, then regulation is guaranteed.

Is it illegal to transfer value from person A to person B without the middleman?

Re: Tether price manipulation

#119

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

qeternity wrote: post #15

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…

The killer app for Bitcoin is escaping government fiat money that is backed by literally nothing at all and is being printed at increasingly alarming rates. 40% of all USD ever created were “made” in 2020. That will have repercussions for decades and isn’t a currency I want to stay in.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1

Ironically (or not) Bitcoin was created in 2009 right when that graph gets really crazy.

Re: Tether price manipulation

#120

Post by samvher »

shuntress wrote: post #56
qeternity wrote: post #15

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…

>Bitcoin's narrative has had to morph from "digital currency" to "digital gold" The narrative around bitcoin has always been "It is digital currency. It works like gold". Hence the notion of "mining" . EDIT: downvote me if you want but you are flat wrong Section 6 in the bitcoin whitepaper explicitly likens bitcoin to gold [0] > The steady addition of a constant of amount of new coins is analogous to gold miners expe…

That may be true but there is definitely a difference between the way people talked about it earlier ("later we will all be paying with bitcoin") to how it is now ("it's a store of value and maybe there is potential for bitcoin-backed currencies").
Post reply on HN