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An $814M Mystery Near the Heart of the Biggest Bitcoin Exchange

bloomberg.com

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Re: An $814M Mystery Near the Heart of the Biggest Bitcoin Exchange

#81

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

StavrosK wrote: post #68
epaga wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why sites continue to do this is beyond me. But, fortunately, disabling auto-playing in Firefox is actually not that hard. about:config, then set "media.autoplay.enabled" to false. Done.

Yes, but I do want YouTube and other sites to autoplay.

It's not quite there yet, but very close - consider qutebrowser. Work on per-domain settings is ongoing (so you can disable autoplay for everything but YouTube) and disabling autoplay is present in Qt 5.11 so hooking it up to a qutebrowser setting is probably trivial.

https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser/issues/27

https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser/issues/1643

Re: An $814M Mystery Near the Heart of the Biggest Bitcoin Exchange

#82

Post by jnbiche »

ufo wrote: post #22
jatsign wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reserve will be in Ethereum (and possibly also in ERC20 tokens like OMG), not USD. You buy Unum using these other cryptocurrencies, and can always sell Unum to buy anything in the reserve, always at the current USD spot price. This of course raises the possibility of the USD value of the reserve falling below the # of issued Unum. In that case, a sale penalty goes into affect, to discourage selling and increasing…

Lots of issues here... - Buying Unum is a lose-lose situation. If the USD price of Ether goes down you redeem your Unum for less than you paid for it. If the price of Ether goes up, you redeem your Unum for less than if you just had bought Ether instead. - Why bother tethering a cryptocurrenvy to Ether instead of just using Ether directly? - Who determines what is the spot price of Ether at any given moment? - Unum c…

@jatsign, would you address these questions? I can answer the second one (you would tether to Ether in order to establish enough reserve value to back a certain amount of USD, since you can't reliably back a crypto with a fiat currency as we see with this Bitfinex business).

But some of the other questions are good ones, can @jatsign address them?

Re: An $814M Mystery Near the Heart of the Biggest Bitcoin Exchange

#83

Post by BeetleB »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #21
brndnmtthws wrote: post #11

There's a lot of FUD, but very little evidence of wrongdoing. It seems mostly like one person on a campaign to discredit Bitfinex because of some grudge. https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed is the person spreading the FUD, they're also shitposting all over Reddit and elsewhere. Seems like now the 'media' is going along for the ride and enjoying the ad revenue.

[flagged]

>Are you on Bitfinex' payroll?

Sorry, but that's hurting the conversation.

Re: An $814M Mystery Near the Heart of the Biggest Bitcoin Exchange

#84

Post by mancerayder »

Can anyone with a more studied background in economics help hypothesize the after-effects on Bitcoin and other altcoins if this 814M 'digital counterfeiting' for lack of a better term, is true? For example, 800M has been artificially pumped into the Bitcoin and general crypto ecosystem, like air in a bicycle tire.

And this is a game theory sort of question, too:

If this is true: now, what?

Re: An $814M Mystery Near the Heart of the Biggest Bitcoin Exchange

#85

Post by mancerayder »

brndnmtthws wrote: post #20
kbart wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "FUD" could be easily dismissed by showing a bank account statement containing these $814M. The fact that Bitfinex doesn't do that means they have something to hide or are in serious trouble.

No, it's pretty normal for private companies not to share that kind of data.

But there's a wider economic ecosystem at risk. By not sharing and proving that Tether is in fact really tethered, they're leading people to the conclusion that there's 800M US artificially pumped, artificially PRICED into some currencies.

That has the effect of adding 800M of fakeness, which may not be a big deal given the market caps of these cryptos, but perhaps more importantly it has the effect of weakening faith in the crypto project.

Re: An $814M Mystery Near the Heart of the Biggest Bitcoin Exchange

#86

Post by trqx »

slazaro wrote: post #8

WARNING: Auto-playing video with possibly loud sound.

"do not link sites with autoplay videos" should be added to the guidelines imo.

When I encounter interesting articles on such anti-user sites, I don't bother browsing the site, I use a script to extract the article and rehost it on a public pastebin. I'd rather avoid them at all, and that wouldn't even be necessary if everyone used atom/rss feeds.

see example for this one: https://0x1a4.1337.cx/o_27/

You can blacklist bloomberg.com & co from your browser with extensions such as https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/blocksite/

Re: An $814M Mystery Near the Heart of the Biggest Bitcoin Exchange

#87

Post by koolba »

> Neither Tether nor Bitfinex disclose on their websites or in any public documents where they’re located or who’s in charge, but information is available elsewhere.

> Jan Ludovicus van der Velde is CEO of both Bitfinex and Tether, Torossian said by email on Dec. 3. A LinkedIn page for someone named J. L. van der Velde, who identifies himself as Bitfinex’s CEO, says he speaks Dutch, English, German, Italian and Chinese, attended National Taiwan Normal University from 1985 to 1988 and was previously CEO of PAG Asia Inc

I'm continually amazed that people will put $1,000s of dollars (or coins, or whatevers) in the custody of an entity whose location they can't even identify, let alone locate.

The only thing I can see stopping them from running off with whatever assets they currently do have are either:

- They're extremely profitable.

- They're broke.

- They're scared of mafia style entities following up where regulation hasn't.

Re: An $814M Mystery Near the Heart of the Biggest Bitcoin Exchange

#88

Post by ceejayoz »

brndnmtthws wrote: post #34
kbart wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

obligation != trust. I wouldn't trust private company that claims to back crypto currency 1-to-1 with USD, but doesn't back these claims with numbers in any way. The fact that they are not legally obligated to do so doesn't change that.

We're in agreement, but lack evidence is not evidence of wrongdoing.

It's not proof, but "you just have to trust me" when talking about hundreds of millions of dollars is potential evidence of something shady.

Re: An $814M Mystery Near the Heart of the Biggest Bitcoin Exchange

#89

Post by imglorp »

StavrosK wrote: post #68
epaga wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why sites continue to do this is beyond me. But, fortunately, disabling auto-playing in Firefox is actually not that hard. about:config, then set "media.autoplay.enabled" to false. Done.

Yes, but I do want YouTube and other sites to autoplay.

There's also addons that let you remember a choice per site.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-autop...

Re: An $814M Mystery Near the Heart of the Biggest Bitcoin Exchange

#90

Post by 0xfeba »

brndnmtthws wrote: post #24
gthtjtkt wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether the accusations are true or not, I wouldn't hold a single dollar in Tether after reading this on their website: > “There is no contractual right or other right or legal claim against us to redeem or exchange your tethers for money. We do not guarantee any right of redemption or exchange of tethers by us for money.”

I don't use tether either, but this seems like total unsubstantiated nonsense to me.

I have an LLC I started that makes a coin (Тедер) I'd like you to use for transfers between exchanges. Here are the details:

- Тедер is backed 1:1 with USD.

- 800M of Тедер exists

So, what is the problem?

- My LLC has the USD, trust me. But I won't prove it. Because I don't have to.

- Also, my terms state we make no agreement that we will honor the backing.

So does that sound like something you would invest in?

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