301–310 of 317 posts
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Allegedly stolen.
? The FBI collaborates on the investigation and even returned them some funds they were able to seize a few months ago.
This article goes to great alarmist lengths, past the point of being deceiving. Just the very first line: > One of the world’s most widely traded virtual currencies faces renewed doubts about its stability [...] Tether is nothing in terms of crypto currency penetration. It does not even have a percent of daily trading. Then a few paragraphs down: > [...] within an hour of the attorney general’s statement and Tether s…
If those were the prices before and after, the drop was 19.45%.
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Tether functions as sort of the reserve currency of crypto. Many exchanges don't even offer fiat money or banking connections - to use them, you have to send Bitcoin in from another exchange or a personal wallet, then you can convert it into Tether or other altcoins. People who are "getting out of crypto" by selling Bitcoins because they think the price is gonna drop oftentimes are actually buying Tethers. When 80% o…
This is the weakest theory I've read yet; people aren't exiting tether because it's too inconvenient. Forgetting that they would've already gone through the KYC process when they entered the crypto market, and there's little hassle in a market sell-order and withdrawal request. The only inconvenience is the time the bank withdrawal would take to process, which isn't necessary unless your plan is to exit the market en…
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I've heard that theory, but I can't say I understand it. Let's say USDT goes to 0 instantly. All traders lose their parked money. I can see a crash from panic and from people recouping their lost safe money, but what else does it have to do with with cryptocurrencies?
If USDT would go to 0 instantly many things would happen (a few of the biggest BTC fiat markets would not be able to operate, such as binance's main BTC market). As a practical example big traders would obviously sell their tether straight into crypto on those markets. But since they don't want to be exposed to that much crypto they would sell the same amount on other exchanges (such as Coinbase). In these chaotic ev…
What happens when that safety net vanishes as hoards of people are running off the cliff?
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This isn't really a theoretical issue, either. Risk is part of the price of a security. Something that has a high risk, may be valued less by investors. Often other investments will carry the same amount of reward but less risk.
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Bitfinex reports their prices in USD but I'm pretty sure that's bullshit. It's like saying "Each Tether is worth $1 because we say so." The Kraken price is much more accurate. I suspect the price is holding up because most holders of Tether don't consider this a big problem. Either they believe that the NY AG will find that there are adequate reserves backing Tether after all, or they believe the reserves don't matte…
This is much worse than not having reserves. In reserve banking there may be insufficient liquidity to handle a significant withdraw event but theoretically the money in the bank balances, it is just not liquid because it is lent out. The situation with tether is much much worse. About 30% of the money invested in tether is gone and unlikly to come back. The books do not balance, it is not a timing issue, it isn't a…
Also, unattended arbitrage bots might end up equalizing the price now but becoming major bag-holders later. Right now, the spread between the Coinbase & Bitfinex BTC prices is > $300. The logical response of an arbitrage bot is to buy Bitcoin on Coinbase (spending USD) and sell it on Bitfinex (receiving USDT); they provide the Bitcoin liquidity that people who want out of Tether need. This creates a counterflow of BTC from Coinbase to Bitfinex, spending down their dollar reserves at Coinbase and accumulating a Tether hoard at Bitfinex. If the bottom falls out of Tether, their accumulated profits (and any capital invested) becomes worthless.
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This quite an ignorant comment. I've been working with Blockchain tech (Crypto by extension) for a while now and there's a lot of experimenting, genuine projects being built right now. A lot of smart people are in this space building solutions. Major companies like Samsung / Facebook have teams working on PoCs. Unfair to imply that everyone in Crypto is selling snake oil.
> Unfair to imply that everyone in Crypto is selling snake oil. So, who isn't? Look throughout the blockchain ecosystem and all you will see are scams, illegal activity and get rich quick fools. I have personally yet to see a use of blockchain tech for useful legal purposes. Yes, you will see some companies "announce" that they are "investigating" blockchain or whatnot to get some free PR, but you don't ever see them…
A tiny fraction of companies in the blockchain ecosystem:
Pfizer, Fidelity, Microsoft, Rutgers University, T-Mobile, National Bank of Canada, John Hancock Life Insurance, J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, Ernst and Young.
If all you are able to see when you look at blockchain engineers are scammers, lawbreakers, and "get rich quick" fools, I'll humbly suggest that you haven't really been looking.
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> Tether is currently being traded around 99 cents Tether's "market price" is manipulated. People cannot exchange tether for dollars without jumping to another exchange.
Kraken, a US based exchange trades tethers for dollars. This is plainly incorrect. https://trade.kraken.com/markets/kraken/usdt/usd
There are billions of tethers in circulation.
Is this a surprise to anyone? I was under the impression that even the most ardent HODL-er thought Tether was, at best, a very risky investment, and more likely a total scam.
But from this, it looks like Bitfinex was completely amateur hour, and that—but for Tether being raided to cover the results of that—Tether might not have been a scam at all.
Two corporate officers signed the credit line contract on behalf of Bitfinex.
Two corporate officers signed the credit line contract on behalf of Tether.
They were the same two people.
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> it still trades 1:1 to USD today On exchanges of questionably integrity. And where it is impossible to reliably short the instrument.
> impossible to reliably short the instrument I see this a lot, if you can't sell short then the price can't decline? If I held Tether and thought it was worth less than $1.00, I would sell it. If most people think it's worth less than $1.00, they would sell it and the price would drop to reflect the risk. Why doesn't this happen? Is is just crooked exchanges posting phantom orders? If so, why don't smart traders sel…
Also there is empirical proof short selling matters because during the banking crises they banned short selling which causes certain bank stocks to jump up, and then when they allowed it again the prices fell like a rock.