News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Researchers Say. Parent comment

Re:Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Rese... by DINKDINK on Wednesday June 13, 2018 @01:59PM (#17305516)
>magical fountain of fake dollars

The problem though is that if ether really were a "magical fountain of fake dollars" that would be reflected somewhere in the market price of tethers. Look at the price charts for tether->USD it's pretty nominally 1:1 https://cryptowat.ch/markets/kraken/usdt/usd

The most contrarian one could argue is that people who sold bitcoin for fraudulent tethers haven't tried to withdrawal them /at all/ and therefore the tetherUSD liquidity hasn't been tested.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Rese... by ufo on Wednesday June 13, 2018 @02:02PM (#17305546)
One problem with the market price for tethers is that it is actually very hard to sell them for USD. For example, Bitfinex does not allow USD withdrawals, only Bitcoin withdrawals.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Rese... by DINKDINK on Wednesday June 13, 2018 @02:24PM (#17305744)
>it is actually very hard to sell [tether] for USD

Kraken offers a USDTUSD pair. How is that hard at all? https://blog.kraken.com/post/206/kraken-announces-support-fo...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Rese... by makomk on Wednesday June 13, 2018 @04:40PM (#17306735)
Very little trading volume, and I'm not sure how easy it is to withdraw USD from them either. There's generally a lot more volume and market depth available for trading Tether to Bitcoin and that to USD. Also, for some curious reason, during most of the time the Bitcoin price was going through the roof that Bitcoin was actually worth more USD than it was USDT - the effective exchange rate via this route valued Tether at a small but very noticable premium to its face value.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Rese... by nootropicat on Wednesday June 13, 2018 @05:12PM (#17306986)
>For example, Bitfinex does not allow USD withdrawals

Not true, bitfinex reenabled usd withdrawals in November.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Rese... by 456hdsaq234g on Wednesday June 13, 2018 @02:18PM (#17305687)
not too hard. kraken and bittrex both do USD/USDT pairs (which, at 1.0 is a good metric of USDT health)
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Rese... by andrewla on Wednesday June 13, 2018 @02:56PM (#17305986)
True for Kraken (although their USD withdrawal policies are very restrictive, so not a huge improvement over getting your money from Bitfinex).

Bittrex has a public pair between Tether and "True USD" [1], but their fiat USD market is not yet available to the public, and I don't know where we can find pricing data for the non-public market.

[1] https://bittrex.com/Market/Index?MarketName=USDT-TUSD

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Rese... by polynomial on Wednesday June 13, 2018 @04:50PM (#17306812)
> although their USD withdrawal policies are very restrictive

What is "very restrictive"? Cap on max amount for a given period?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Bitcoin’s Price Was Artificially Inflated Last Year, Rese... by JackCh on Wednesday June 13, 2018 @02:34PM (#17305826)
> "The most contrarian one could argue is that people who sold bitcoin for fraudulent tethers haven't tried to withdrawal them /at all/"

Or they're just matched by the number of people with 'legitimate' tether who haven't withdrawn?

[ Parent | on HN ]