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Re:Worries Grow That the Price of Bitcoin Is Being Propped Up by Nursie on Thursday February 01, 2018 @12:06PM (#16283497)
>> i get what you're saying, but doesn't this mean that value of USDT is fake rather than value of BTC?

If two billion tokens which people have taken to be as good as USD have entered the market, they will have inflated the price of BTC and other coins

>> in the end it's those that hold USDT will run to sell it either for USD or BTC, which would push BTC price even higher? now that would be ironic!

The price in USDT and USDT-only exchanges could indeed rocket, but the price in real actual USD would be expected to fall. I don't think that's ironic ... ?

--edit-- I seem to be rate limited at the moment so I am going to reply to the post below, here.

Why do you think, in a situation where tether fails, that the BTC/ETH price on bitfinex would change?

The price of BTC in tethers may rocket, but the price of ETH in tethers also would rocket, as nobody would want tether. The price of ETH in BTC is unlikely to move much.

There's no arb opportunity I can see.

Re:Worries Grow That the Price of Bitcoin Is Being Propped Up by IronKettle on Thursday February 01, 2018 @01:23PM (#16284294)
> The price in USDT and USDT-only exchanges could indeed rocket, but the price in real actual USD would be expected to fall.

Wait, would it?

If you were an arb wouldn't you:

1) Buy bitcoin on a different exchange (with a temporarily lower price)

2) Transfer that bitcoin to, say, bitfinex (or another USDT exchange)

3) Sell that bitcoin for, say, ETH

4) Transfer that ETH back to the first exchange

5) Profit

Though I guess that would also flood the market and tank the ETH-BTC price as well (though I guess another arb could take advantage of that discrepancy as well).

Or are you talking about exchanges that only do USDT-BTC?