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Tether price manipulation

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Re: Tether price manipulation

#181

Post by Born_Again »

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…

>>Bitcoin's narrative has had to morph from "digital currency" to "digital gold"

I wholeheartedly agree with this. Let's look at some Reddit /r/bitcoin posts in January 2014:

https://redditsearch.io/?term=&dataviz=false&aggs=false&subr...

People were discussing bitcoin being used as a digital currency. There was talk of bitcoin being accepted on Overstock.com, TigerDirect, and using bitcoin apps on phones as a digital wallet. I would argue the majority of people in the bitcoin community at the time were genuinely interested in the technology and its use as an everyday currency.

Now let's look at some Reddit /r/bitcoin posts in January 2020. I picked this date because there weren't any recent significant price fluctuations.

https://redditsearch.io/?term=&dataviz=false&aggs=false&subr...

There was practically zero discussion on using bitcoin as a currency. People were only interested in the price and treated it as a commodity, just like a digital gold.

> EDIT: downvote me if you want but you are flat wrong

Do people treat bitcoin as a currency or a commodity today?

Re: Tether price manipulation

#182

Post by newsclues »

dgellow wrote: post #125
newsclues wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Vendors of firearms, pornography, legal funds for unpopular causes, dissident content creators Neither pornography, nor legal funds for unpopular cause (think WikiLeaks), or dissident creators are criminal. At least not in the US or Europe. But they are still blocked by the main payment processing companies.

The theory and reality don’t match.

Drugs are likely the number one things bought using crypto as currency.

Firearms and pornography can be bought with dollars if you’re using crypto to buy them or other unpopular goods or services, you are veering dangerously close to black markets, which invite regulation.

Re: Tether price manipulation

#183

Post by TearsInTheRain »

user22 wrote: post #174
ldiracdelta wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. That is called deflation. It also has to do with fractional reserve banking. The fraction of your outstanding dollars that you could actually cover with gold. If no one ever wants to make a run on your bank, you can keep the fraction very low.

I understand the deflation part, but my question really was is it an economy the size of the united states even possible if we stayed on the gold standard.

Not having enough money to transact would definitely have suppressed our economic growth, but then again maybe we would have gotten really good at mining for gold to make up for it

Re: Tether price manipulation

#184

Post by xur17 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #176
xur17 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because way more exchanges offer USDT trading. USDC / DAI are both fairly new, and aren't offered as trading pairs nearly as frequently.

Coinbase offers DAI, plus you can exchange DAI for any ERC20 token on a dex.

Right, and coinbase offers USDC as well. The problem is the long tail of exchanges overseas that only offer USDT.

Re: Tether price manipulation

#185

Post by TearsInTheRain »

caeril wrote: post #94
tim333 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>does not have a "killer app" and is 99.99% used for speculation You could argue speculation is the killer app. I'm not a fan but it's hard to deny it's a huge business and some people seem to like it. Kind of like Las Vegas in a way.

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…

And we seem to be creating more and more dissidents everyday

Re: Tether price manipulation

#186

Post by xur17 »

rglullis wrote: post #155
xur17 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because way more exchanges offer USDT trading. USDC / DAI are both fairly new, and aren't offered as trading pairs nearly as frequently.

Still, they do exist now . And again, if an exchange only offers USDT as on-ramp that should be a massive signal against its trustworthiness.

I somewhat agree, but it's also a chicken and the egg problem - everyone uses USDT as the primary pair because everyone wants it, and everyone wants it because that's what every other exchange offers. Exchanges can offer another stablecoin, but it's likely to have very little volume.

Re: Tether price manipulation

#187

Post by xur17 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #177
xur17 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So as source for the claim that you "can't redeem tether", you are linking to something that says you can redeem tether?

When did I say I was providing a source for not being able to redeem tether? I'm just linking to information that I found useful when forming an opinion on the matter.

Re: Tether price manipulation

#188

Post by gthaman »

qeternity wrote: post #178
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Backed by nothing...as opposed to bitcoin? People who repeat this don't understand that fiat money is based on trust...and that is not a bad thing. This is why blockchain is fundamentally stunted: the global society is based on trust and cooperation. Trustless systems will never be able to compete in these arenas.

yawn

speaking of jumping the shark, have you seen what governments have been up to lately ?

interest rates at a 5,000 year low, moral hazard abound & global fiat collapse imminent in the best case and in the worst case we have banks/elites/governments who are going to be looking to further enslave those in debt and forced out of business/work with some dystopian debt forgiveness scheme involving a 'vaccine' schedule and travel restrictions or whatever else (use your imagination).

the truth is that everything mentioned in these comments was an argument that had already been had years ago - the markets reflect that - but i did enjoy reading the last sentence of your original comment and thinking to myself "am I reading Time Magazine ?"

Re: Tether price manipulation

#189

Post by TearsInTheRain »

c-fe wrote: post #105
shuntress wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitfinex as an organization ‘printing’ free money and using it to pump the market. How?

like I mentioned above, it is speculated that they are the ones who are printing the tether, then use that to buy bitcoin. They are then probably hoping that whoever receives tether for selling their bitcoin does not immediately want usd, but instead is happy with the tether as it is 'backed 1:1'. (Again, I have to stress that this is a theory i read somewhere on the internet, while lots of things add up, it may also…

Do they even allow exchanging tether for USD? I dont think they do

Re: Tether price manipulation

#190

Post by graeme »

otherjason wrote: post #129
graeme wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cboe ended their bitcoin futures. As such there’s no way to bet on a bitcoin collapse that I know of, in a less risky options-like way. Shorts (if they exist) would be extremely risky, as you owe more if bitcoin rises.

CME Group still offers Bitcoin futures, along with options: https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/bitcoin-futures.html

Oh thanks. Where can you trade those? Couldn’t find them on questrade.
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