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Trading platform admits Tether is manipulating Bitcoin price

decrypt.co

31 points by pretfood 7 years ago · 29 comments

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Semaphor 7 years ago

So what's with the title on HN?

"Trading platform admits Tether is manipulating Bitcoin price"

This is nowhere in the article. When people spend millions to buy bitcoin, the price goes up. That is how it works. If they have to take a step through tether, that is only to work around the limitations of many exchanges not taking fiat.

What bullshit.

  • quotha 7 years ago

    The thing is they are not spending the millions. The tethers are not backed by those millions. When this is realized, BTC price will crash!

    • Semaphor 7 years ago

      That's a completely different thing and also not what the article is about.

      But in any way, I don't understand that meme. When tether becomes worthless, there will be a lot of uncertainty and maybe some people will panic sell, but how does it actually affect the people who don't give a shit about tether?

    • keymone 7 years ago

      Why will BTC price crash? People holding USDT will want to sell USDT possibly at discount. You can sell USDT for either USD or BTC. That will only create buying pressure for BTC, pushing it up.

ceejayoz 7 years ago

Headline doesn't match the site, and the article reads largely like Bitfinex PR.

The idea that large, savvy investors with millions to spend are going to put their money into a currency that's already had nearly a billion dollars seized and under investigation by the NY AG is simply not credible to me.

  • headsoup 7 years ago

    Indeed, the article is most certainly pro Tether/Bitfinex and handwaves the accusation of doubt from Bitfinex'ed (with the old "yeah but other people do it on other platforms (that are a little different...) so it's all legit!"

    The best line is "Harborne said it was more a matter of bull-run optimism than cynical market manipulation"...except the transactions come first...

    • benmunster1 7 years ago

      Hardly Bitfinex PR — the guy calls in rabid conspiracy theorist Bitfinex'ed to counter the guy's claims...

    • abeaulne 7 years ago

      > ...except the transactions come first...

      one need to buy a ticket _before_ boarding the train

      here the ticket is Tether, and the train are exchanges (mostly Bitfinex)

      • headsoup 7 years ago

        Except the circular argument that their ticket is bought because of optimism, that is created by them buying the ticket... hence the chicken-egg statement in the article.

  • whamlastxmas 7 years ago

    If having a currency seized in legal proceedings makes illegitimate to you then you better switch to seashells.

    Also if you get most of your BTC seized you're doing it wrong.

    • ceejayoz 7 years ago

      1. Tether had their actual bank account contents seized. Cash - nothing to do with BTC holdings.

      2. There's a big difference between "money gets seized sometimes" and "this shady bank that promises audits but never completes them had half its assets frozen".

granaldo 7 years ago

Bitcoin is priced at $11,000 now https://www.coingecko.com/en Is this largely schemed by a few individuals having tether influence?

But what's more strange is how fast the price has gone up in the last 30 days based on the chart. I will put that this wont hold water for too long

ixtli 7 years ago

I cant figure out why this is flagged and people are claiming the article doesn't support the HN title. What does this mean if not "tether is being used to manipulate BTC"

> “Bitfinex [a large crypto exchange that operates as Tether’s affiliate] issues tethers to their traders for market manipulation, market manipulators pump and dump, then ‘pay’ for the tethers later.”

The title is literally the core claim the article is making. To be very clear, though, this is not news to anyone who follows bitcoin community drama. Whats funny about the article is that an insider admitted it.

  • ceejayoz 7 years ago

    IMO, Tether is dirty as shit, but we're still supposed to use the actual title on HN. The headline here doesn't appear in the article at all, even if the implications do.

    • ixtli 7 years ago

      ahh fair. i was under the impression that you could summarize the point in HN titles. tbh there's so much cognitive dissonance in the world of BTC commentary that an explanation should be mandatory!

  • Semaphor 7 years ago

    Because not even that quote supports the headline here. This is not what Tether said, it's what Bitfinex'd said, a blogger that posts way too many assumptions for me to take them seriously (even though I think a bunch of what they say hits the nail).

    The headline is a pure invention not related to the article.

jnordwick 7 years ago

Whales and otc desks buy Teathers in $100k blocks so they spread purchases across exchanges that didn't accept dollars?

That's doesn't sound like manipulation. It sounds oddly normal and acceptable for a coin that we know has problems.

The biggest lie in your article is calling tether "fully backed". That's laughable since we know from the AG report it is 70% at most and likely lower when you ignore paper from related companies.

  • benmunster1 7 years ago

    literally addresses this: "The blogger Bitfinex’ed disputes this, saying that Tether’s failure to disclose the Buy orders from its customers amid the New York Attorney General’s ongoing investigation into Bitfinex—which was accused of borrowing from Tether’s supposedly “fully backed” reserves to cover up an $850 million hole in its finances—looks fishy."

ixtli 7 years ago

people "printing" Tether have been manipulating BTC price for a very long time. I have personally benefited from this!

  • fbernier 7 years ago

    You have not benefited from it until you've sold and exchanged for actual money in your bank account. Just making sure you know.

  • quotha 7 years ago

    BTC price will crash when world realizes tether is not backed by US dollars that it claims!

    • ixtli 7 years ago

      spoilers: tether is not backed by usd and bitfinex is insolvent.

  • headsoup 7 years ago

    Congratulations?

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