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U.S. Launches Criminal Probe into Bitcoin Price Manipulation

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Re: U.S. Launches Criminal Probe into Bitcoin Price Manipulation

#121

Post by spookthesunset »

anonymouz wrote: post #82
lagadu wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, right on tether.to they say, and I quote: > Our reserve holdings are published daily and subject to frequent professional audits. All tethers in circulation always match our reserves. They've been around for years and the grand total of independents audits is 0 (zero). Sure, assumptions don't make rumors true but them flat-out lying about audits and transparency speaks louder than anything else and we're not ev…

Even worse, they tried to get an audit, but it ended up with them and their auditor ending the process without producing an audit. Apparently they weren't too happy the auditor wanted to actually take a close look: “We confirm that the relationship with Friedman is dissolved. Given the excruciatingly detailed procedures Friedman was undertaking for the relatively simple balance sheet of Tether, it became clear that a…

The fact that people still support tether after getting fired by their auditor and then releasing the statement you quoted astounds me.

It is the most clear cut indicator that there is some super sketchy shit going on ever.

People seem to be willing to believe whatever they want despise clear signs they are wrong. Especially when there is the possibility of getting lambo-rich with Bitcoin....

Re: U.S. Launches Criminal Probe into Bitcoin Price Manipulation

#122

Post by api »

zby wrote: post #101
sine wrote: post #5

For anyone who hasn't been following, the prevailing theory is that the largest Cryptocoin exchange "Bitfinex" also runs an altcoin called "Teather" which was marketed as being backed 1:1 by USD. So far they've created 2.8 BILLION USDT and coincidently the times they create millions of these happens to be in the middle of extreme market crashes. See this chart: https://i.imgur.com/Uo07d1d.jpg More details here: https…

For anyone who hasn't read the article - I wish Tether was investigated too - but this article is not about that: "The illicit tactics that the Justice Department is looking into include spoofing and wash trading"

This could be working up to that.

Re: U.S. Launches Criminal Probe into Bitcoin Price Manipulation

#123

Post by spookthesunset »

awt wrote: post #96
tptacek wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, Bitcoin finally got to a place where enough normal retail financial customers are exposed to it that the DOJ can't ignore scams, and by the time the ecosystem is locked down and the get-lambos-quick schemes are foreclosed on, Bitcoin will look about as attractive as it did in 2010.

Btc value increased not due to scams - neither the scammers nor the scammed ever hold the stuff (that is, off an exchange in a secure wallet), but due to long term holders, to whom it will continue to be attractive until some state goes back on the gold standard, which is not happening. EDIT: Also, the number of people to whom btc is attractive is less important than the type of people. It may be that there is never…

Nobody knows why the value of BTC decided to spike like it did last year. Just like nobody knows why it is sliding back down to earth.

It is one of the many reasons it makes a piss-poor store of value.

(Of course the answer to the spike could very well be “somebody fired up the tether printer” plus “super shady exchanges did tons of wash trading/oughright made up fake transactions”.

Re: U.S. Launches Criminal Probe into Bitcoin Price Manipulation

#124

Post by awt »

spookthesunset wrote: post #123
awt wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Btc value increased not due to scams - neither the scammers nor the scammed ever hold the stuff (that is, off an exchange in a secure wallet), but due to long term holders, to whom it will continue to be attractive until some state goes back on the gold standard, which is not happening. EDIT: Also, the number of people to whom btc is attractive is less important than the type of people. It may be that there is never…

Nobody knows why the value of BTC decided to spike like it did last year. Just like nobody knows why it is sliding back down to earth. It is one of the many reasons it makes a piss-poor store of value. (Of course the answer to the spike could very well be “somebody fired up the tether printer” plus “super shady exchanges did tons of wash trading/oughright made up fake transactions”.

It is indeed a piss-poor store of value for people who have high time preference, but unmatched for those with low time preference.

Re: U.S. Launches Criminal Probe into Bitcoin Price Manipulation

#125

Post by chrisco255 »

shiado wrote: post #120

The mechanics of manipulating price are just too easy not to do it. The wash trading is clearly so bad on many exchanges that I bet there are agreements with the miners to recuperate losses to trading fees. It is in all parties interest to prop the price up this way so why wouldn't they do it. So many sketchy things get ignored because they prop the price up. The USDT situation will get interesting eventually. Somebo…

Tether will just be replaced by other stable coins if it turns out that Bitfinex can't back them if there were a run on Tethers (the only scenario we would find if this were actually true). There are alternative stable coins which will rise to compete with Tether and balance out the market, including Circle's USDC (https://blog.circle.com/2018/05/15/circle-announces-usd-coin...) and the ETH/Gold-backed MakerDAI: (https://makerdao.com/).

Re: U.S. Launches Criminal Probe into Bitcoin Price Manipulation

#126

Post by pathseeker »

DINKDINK wrote: post #87
sine wrote: post #5

For anyone who hasn't been following, the prevailing theory is that the largest Cryptocoin exchange "Bitfinex" also runs an altcoin called "Teather" which was marketed as being backed 1:1 by USD. So far they've created 2.8 BILLION USDT and coincidently the times they create millions of these happens to be in the middle of extreme market crashes. See this chart: https://i.imgur.com/Uo07d1d.jpg More details here: https…

If there was a problem redeeming Tether for USD, you'd expect that the market price distortion of Tether. But it hasn't[1] https://www.tradingview.com/chart/?symbol=POLONIEX:USDTUSD >they've created 2.8 BILLION USDT Absolute numbers are meaningless and less eye catching when they're compared to the entire market. 2.8 ~ ~ Billion ~ ~ USDT is only 0.5%-0.8% of the market. Do you really think that a 300-500 billion doll…

If tether isn't a scam, why have then not yet found an auditor willing to actually audit them?

Re: U.S. Launches Criminal Probe into Bitcoin Price Manipulation

#127

Post by tomjakubowski »

DINKDINK wrote: post #87
sine wrote: post #5

For anyone who hasn't been following, the prevailing theory is that the largest Cryptocoin exchange "Bitfinex" also runs an altcoin called "Teather" which was marketed as being backed 1:1 by USD. So far they've created 2.8 BILLION USDT and coincidently the times they create millions of these happens to be in the middle of extreme market crashes. See this chart: https://i.imgur.com/Uo07d1d.jpg More details here: https…

If there was a problem redeeming Tether for USD, you'd expect that the market price distortion of Tether. But it hasn't[1] https://www.tradingview.com/chart/?symbol=POLONIEX:USDTUSD >they've created 2.8 BILLION USDT Absolute numbers are meaningless and less eye catching when they're compared to the entire market. 2.8 ~ ~ Billion ~ ~ USDT is only 0.5%-0.8% of the market. Do you really think that a 300-500 billion doll…

> What can be said about Tether: it's a trusted third party that's vulnerable to fractional reserve

What? Isn't the entire friggin point of Tether that it's _not_ a fractional reserve system?

From their own FAQ (emphasis mine):

> All tethers are pegged at one-to-one with matching fiat currency (e.g., 1 USD₮ = 1 USD) and are backed 100% by actual assets in our reserve account.

https://tether.to/faqs/

Re: U.S. Launches Criminal Probe into Bitcoin Price Manipulation

#128

Post by perl4ever »

Nursie wrote: post #112
sunsu wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes perfect sense. If many people are trying to BUY USDT (increasing demand for USDT) the price of USDT will increase. Tether tries to prevent this by printing more USDT (increasing supply). They are not "magicking" Dollars, they are magicking a commodity (USDT) pegged to Dollar. I'm not saying that I'm a big Tether fan or anything. However to say that it "doesn't make sense" when they print more Tether during m…

> It makes perfect sense. If many people are trying to BUY USDT (increasing demand for USDT) the price of USDT will increase. Why? It's worth exactly one dollar. Which they have in an account. That's the point. The price of the other cryptocurrency will come down, and the value of USDT compared to that cryptocurrency will indeed rise, as it should when people want to sell to a market where there's more demand on doll…

I thought that what people call a "currency peg" is normally the same as what you are calling "maintained purely by supply manipulation". So I suspect you may be using words in a nonstandard way.

Re: U.S. Launches Criminal Probe into Bitcoin Price Manipulation

#129

Post by perl4ever »

asfasgasg wrote: post #14
bhouston wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this serious?

The person who wrote it was probably serious, but it is not correct.

"Everybody" hates HFTs, but everybody also wants the illusion of a continuous market that can be bought and sold into at any moment in any quantity. So a lot of the arguments/discussions are really about how we can pretend that the trading which is required isn't really happening.

Re: U.S. Launches Criminal Probe into Bitcoin Price Manipulation

#130

Post by mancerayder »

What grates my nerves isn't primarily Bitfinex/Tether, it's the other exchanges. Why did they accept Tether? Of all the 'altcoins', one backed by an asset like cash is the easiest to verify (or be skeptical of if verification requests are dismissed or ignored). When I signed onto Bittrex, USDT was one of the prominent trading pairs. It was a useful trading pair, because instead of seeing numbers like ".000000314121 : 1 BTC", you'd get a dollar figure you could mentally parse. Of course, the damned software could have done that automatically with a currency of the user's choice. That's kind of a tangent, though. Why weren't the other exchanges more critical of Tether and kept it after months of controversy and skepticism?
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