Bitcoin Forum

What could explain this huge, increasing, spread between Bitfinex and other popular exchanges?

https://i.imgur.com/2XYlE4z.png

This looks like a fantastic arbitrage opportunity, so why no one is taking advantage of it?  ???

Dont you read the forum?  Or reddit or news?  Was Bitfinex exchange lately mentioned?  Was there any news about them?

It's fear about the legal actions filed against Bitfinex by the New York Attorney General. See here: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitfinex-faces-legal-action-from-ny-attorney-general-heres-what-this-means/

Fiat holders at Bitfinex are buying BTC and other crypto and withdrawing from the exchange. They're probably worried about future enforcement actions.

Bitfinex uses USDT. That's the difference.

Bitfinex and USDT are pretty much a bomb right now. Anything can happen, and many people don't want to keep holding it because of that.

Bitfinex has little fiat left to allow its users to withdraw, so they buy Bitcoin instead and withdraw directly after. It's frustrating seeing how this exchanges continues to land itself in deep trouble with their shady operators.

I'll keep an eye out to see how Bitfinex's cold wallet gets drained further due to traders fleeing the platform in order to secure whatever they have left there. Only an utter idiot deposits Bitcoin and sells for USDT right now.

It's time for the authorities to raid everything related to Bitfinex so we get rid of this nasty exchange once and for all. Sure, it will hurt the market initially, but when they implode the pain will be way worse.

I feel that we will soon undergo a memorable correction in Bitcoin's history. I'm already preparing for it, I'm just hoping that the whole cryptocurrency market will be able to recover. Otherwise, I don't know what it will become for the future. No matter all the "great news" that comes after, it will be too late, damages are done.

How much do they have left? I'm a bit surprised it hadn't implode already...

This is their cold wallet that you can follow: https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/3D2oetdNuZUqQHPJmcMDDHYoqkyNVsFk9r

3 days ago Bitfinex withdrew 17.25k BTC from its cold wallet, and I think in a week they'll withdraw even more funds in order to have their hot wallets filled up to allow their users to withdraw without problems.

As we're getting close to the Golden cross there is possible for a correction once the same happens. Further the correction will give a remarkable growth in the market of bitcoin. Whenever there is growth with bitcoin, the same can be experienced over the rest of the altcoins to some extent. This time as mentioned the possibilities for a recovery of the altcoins were low.

What happened 8/2/17, when Bitfinex cold wallet went from 111k bitcoin to .5 bitcoin, then a day later went back to 111k bitcoin?!

   Hello BitHodler, interesting comment. I have two questions for you, what you think how much can all this hurt crypto-market? Do you think that pain will be for
all crypto-holders, or the ones who used Tether and BitFinex?
   Second question is what is smart to do in this situations? Maybe silly question, but you have a lot more experience that I have. To sell all crypto-currencies and
Bitcoin for dollars, and to buy back when prices go down? Or to keep everything in Ethereum, or maybe some other coin?

Bitcoin will always be able to recover. If Bitcoin can deal with MtGox, it can also deal with a silly iFinex (the company that owns Bitfinex and Tether).

I rather have iFinex implode right now, then buy up cheap Bitcoin as a Golden opportunity, and see it continue to grow in a healthy manner. Seriously, these events are a blessing; you get to buy cheap Bitcoin and we got rid of a company that has been poisoning this ecosystem for a long time.

Bitfinex's volumes have gone down continuously. The whales usually spoofing its books have left too. It has become a noob exchange. One has to be to still use this shit.

nobody is going to leave Bitfinex (sadly), they are only temporarily staying away before they go back to that horrible place and continue what they were doing before. otherwise Bitfinex has been shady for a very long time and the more they used Tether the worst they got.
i still haven't forgotten 2016 when Bitfinex was hacked and every topic was about their insolvency and yet everyone went back and continued using them after a while!!!

You can follow whale alert

https://twitter.com/whale_alert

Tether switched to Tron chain.Moving tether will be much faster
Look gap on finex and other exchanges
Look price 4950 is strong support
4750 $ is end of bull trend if break
Paxos is going to deliver 100 mln that week
Tether ppain is opportunity for other stable coins

This missing amount X of total former Marketcap Y should result into a "Peg" of (Y-X)/Y wich is smaller than one, < 1.00 USD/USDT

$850 million in losses and $2800 million Marketcap (but has been lower!) equals a "Peg" of 0.6964 USD/USDT. The next question would be:

Why are markets attaching a value as high as 0.978 USD/USDT and even the lowest dumpt hasn't been reaching these seventy cents! Markets are still hopefull, uninformed, irrational or have some missing information piece about the above incident.

There was a problem with tether and how fake they were which resulted with many people getting away from bitfinex at the same time, some people tried arbitrage for sure but the amount of people who realized tether was just a pure fraud and they didn't want that was insane and they just gave up all their possession at bitfinex to run away to some other exchange.

I don't know if this is 100% true because this is purely speculation but it really was getting out of hand there for a while because of the tether issue for sure and than this spread happened so I assume it can't be just coincidence that they both happened at the same time, they must be related somehow. There needs to be some consequences of their tether scam and I think this is what that consequence is, I hope it would be example for anyone else in the future trying to do the same.

look guys

saucer formation  https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plik:Formacja-spodka.jpg
btc one year https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/BTCUSD/?exchange=COINBASE

Tether and Bitfinex are the ones in trouble. Maybe to some extent, all those exchanges relying on USDT liquidity. As for Bitcoin, it will just go along its natural correction and trapping more shorts.

I don't think the Tether/Bitfinex fiasco will affect the market much. There are other stablecoins to choose from.

But we're in 2019 now and the things are totally different. The ecosystem is a lot bigger, its adoption too. Bitcoin is severely punished for each incident.  But a thing like Tether is like finding a security breach on the network that can't be fixed. People won't trust Bitcoin anymore, only the purists. All the topics like "Be ready to see a lot of bad news about BTC" and "Bitcoin as low as $1k this year" could become relevant lol.

Indeed bitfinex has USDT problem, and this caused the price drop for bitcoin a bit on my opinion, and i hope they will solve soon the USDT problem or they will sue bitfinex if they not proof USDT is backed up by real money.

The spread was caused by investors selling their tethers for bitcoins, which increases the price of bitcoin in Bitfinex.

A massive dump of tethers in the market cause the price of bitcoin to increase. The investigations over tether "legitimacy" would force investors to sell it, increasing bitcoin price.

For how long though? I remember there was a Tether scare in mid-October last year where Bitfinex developed a big premium over the rest of the market like this, and the market pumped too. But it was very short-lived and we ended up crashing a few weeks later.

Which one would make the race? Currently closely observing the Binance trade statistics, my assymption is that is the place where this race finishes.

Tether is done. They should do that pending audit eventually, now that their pants are allready down below knees.

It looks like the spread is still widening for Bitfinex USD but the Tether spread has come all the way down to 1% or so.

Which is basically implying that people are worried about Bitfinex being insolvent BUT not tether.

There is crazy arbing also going on with the Short Bitfinex BTCUSD and Long Bitmex Perps due to the huge negative funding rates we had for the last few days.

So if all this boils over and they don't go insolvent, then its an easy 6-7% trade.

Plus the market is currently over-leveraged with margin longs made by the plebs. The market is now in the hands, and at the mercy of the whalecumulators.

Stop panicking guys, I think we are already safe from that and I feel that its effect is over. And besides, most of the capitulation happened last year so most of those weak hands should be gone by now. This won't hit us very hard this time because what is left are the real supporters and real long term holders so the impact of the FUD is just a mini damage.

why is the ny attorney general concerned with bitfinex? Usa citizens are banned and cant even open an account on that exchange ??? So why should they even care?

Tether is just an aspect of this ecosystem that props up the price of all crypto currencies, that's all. If you take that away, we will definitely feel it, but these 'black swan' events are of temporary nature and an excellent buying opportunity.

If your 'people won't trust Bitcoin anymore' thought holds value, then people won't be trusting ANY top 10 crypto currency anymore, because Tether provides most of their buy support. Bitcoin is way stronger than you think man, and I am sure that when we no longer have iFinex to worry about, Bitcoin will be even stronger. I would pump 90% of my current savings in Bitcoin (right now Bitcoin already accounts for ~60% of my total worth) if we see the price reach $1000 lol.

I remember the CME CEO saying that there aren't enough Bitcoins, well, they will scoop up whatever is being dumped on the market and steer it back up.

We always need some major event to set the pendulum swinging fiercely again, even if its eventual motion is always going to stay the same. I'm not sure Bitfinex is going to be on the same scale as Mt Gox though. They and Tether have had more than enough FUD between themselves to last a lifetime.

Price will -- and has -- continue to slide while they come to grips with this, regardless of what actually happened.

Am also prepared for another upheaval. 2019 was never meant to be spring I think. But don't worry. Better all this now than tomorrow.

More accumulation points to look forward to, so how can I complain?

It is happening!

As I thought, that freaking Tether will soon have a problem. They use it as an escape pod or even larger than that. Now, time for payback.
Other exchange may want to close withdrawals using USDT and also buying other coins using it. They will try to escape using any way possible.
KYC might really work for them now to protect themselves from being used as a way to get that money out.
They must be cornered until there will be nowhere to run.

No worries about bitcoin. If it is cheaper then there will always be a buyer. I am one!

Market crashed in November, two weeks after the miners in China turned off their machines. Probably the big mining companies had to dump bitcoin to cover their expenses, since mining difficulty was not decreased at that time.

Tether FUD is the most irrational FUD on the market. Some bears are mad because they lost the 3k train, but there is little difference between 3-5k if we compare it to between 5-20k.

It boggles my mind how people make this distinction. They're owned by the same company and have the same directors and they dip into each other's funds. Both companies have bank accounts that are very exposed to freezing or seizure risk. All the government agencies investigating them are investigating both of them, not just Bitfinex.

The only real difference is Bitfinex charges a 3% tax on high volume fiat withdrawals ($1MM+ in 30 days) and Tether only charges 1% for the same. That Bitfinex tax has sort of been baked into the price ever since they started charging it last year.


There's a good chance this will boil over, but either company having bank accounts seized and going insolvent will definitely happen eventually. If not this time, then next time, or the time after that.

They've been playing a cat-and-mouse game with regulators for years and I'm amazed they're still here.

Okay, I'm probably too pessimistic about this story. But I remain convinced that Bitfinex/Tether will damage Bitcoin and this over a very long period of time. The price will surely go again below $3,500 and it will stay there for I don't know how long. I said people won't trust BTC anymore but I was thinking about all cryptos. The whales have already done their shopping and so have I and that's not what we thought would happen.

hmm, irrational how? tether has literally come out and said they are insolvent. their liquid reserves are 26% short of actual customer deposits. those customer deposits were replaced by a big fat IOU from bitfinex: https://www.coindesk.com/tether-lawyer-confirms-stablecoin-74-percent-backed-by-cash-and-equivalents

i don't know when this whole situation will implode but when it finally does, it'll definitely be an excuse for a big crash/correction.

but these "whalecumulators" can't keep up accumulating indefinitely! at some point they run out of money and would want to let the price go back up, not to mention that you can't really manipulate the market forever. the market retaliates against you. and that is why the recent rises occurred anyways.
so at this point i would say most of them are leaning towards a rise. there are always some who resist but they would be going against the market.

The spread is still pretty massive for the Bitfinex BTCUSD pair compared to the cash markets. Basically it makes no sense what so ever to buy Bitcoin on Bitfinex because their price is pretty much right at the yearly highs.

So who is buying these overpriced coins? I am guessing its people who are panicking with all this fear of MtGox 2.0 happening again and they are paying a 6% premium to get their coins out. Who is selling these coins? I am guessing its a arbitrage which the whales do between shorting Bitfinex and Longing the Bitmex perps and receiving the nice funding from the bears.

I thought that the corrective year was 2018, but with the recent incidents that happen in bitfinex lately I think that another huge bear market it is inevitable.
USDT is a bomb and it is ticking in bitfinex. I hope that less users are going to be affected from the negative effects, becuase this spread is not an opportunity but a huge danger.

That particular issue seems to alarmed investors and traders attentions, thinking of much safer trades is more important than taking the risk of getting some opportunities of arbitrage trades, it's needs to consider things that might affect your assets as issue still not been cleared yet.

Well, well, well, look at this https://bitcoinwisdom.io/markets/bitfinex/ustusd

Tether back above $1. I feel like the recent drama is just fud. I'm sure a real whale exit would cause more harm than this.

Their trading volumes went down because whales left that exchange. Currently there is less than 90k BTC left in their main cold wallet, and this for such a 'large' exchange is very alarming.

The premium there indicates that there is a lot demand to sell USDT for BTC and withdraw directly after. It wouldn't surprise me if we see another 10-20k BTC being withdrawn from their main cold wallet this week.

Anyone still using that exchange is a retard--you're basically begging them to pull off a scam on you. The only thing this exchange should do is disappear from this ecosystem. Today rather than tomorrow.

But what the whalecumulators love doing is market manipulation. They don't "accumulate indefinitely". They love crashing the market on the plebs, and take more of their money, so that there will be more for them to buy Bitcoin, and less for the plebs.

It's not the first time we've seen an exchange do these things, and god knows it won't be the last. A normal public registered company in a developing country wouldn't get away with this type of hanky panky, but it's amazing what exchanges can and do get away with, over and over.

Whoever thought of printing "crypto" was brilliant. People bought into it and will buy into it tomorrow and thereafter, until the time it all collapses around them. There will be plenty of tears, but I guess telling them so isn't going to change the end of this story.

The situation seems to be getting more puzzling for Bitfinex, basically we just hit a new yearly high of $5730 and it was someone who did a margin long because the margin longs went up by ~650 BTC while shorts went up by ~250 BTC.

So it begs the question, why in the world would you open a margin long on Bitfinex which is +$350 above the rest of the markets? I think what might happen is there might be a massive short squeeze. The exchange is losing BTC because people out of fear are withdrawing their BTC. The funding rate is higher and it shows that.

I think its some whale that are going to stage this long squeeze and it won't be pretty to those who opened a short last month, since they are already sitting at a massive loss.

well there's two different things happening. tether (USDT) is still trading across the market at 1.00 USD. in fact, it was trading even higher than that for a couple days.

however, a persistent disparity between bitfinex and the rest of the market is ongoing. at this moment, coinbase is trading at $5344 and bitstamp is at $5335. bitfinex on the other hand is trading at $5692. that's a 6.69% spread. like the OP said, that's pretty massive and kinda worrisome.

tbh i can't really explain why USDT is still worth $1 but bitfinex bucks are worth significantly less. what's the deal with that?

This is something I don't understand either. Its common sense for the Bitfinex bucks to be worth less than real USD since people are panicking and buying overpriced BTC just to be able to perform a withdraw. In the same way that people were buying overpriced BTC on MtGox right before it collpased because fiat withdraws werent possible, only BTC withdraws were allowed.

However since Tether is also the same company, that stablecoin should also be priced under 6% of the real market value of a USD fiat. The situation is very fishy indeed. And also I don't understand why there are margin longs being opened up on Bitfinex when you could do a margin long at a much cheaper price.

Tether literally told that 74% of all their token is backed by "either cash or cash equivalence things" so literally not even %74 backed by cash let alone 1 to 1 ratio they used to promise. Now we don't even know what these things that equal cash are and even if we knew we still don't know how much of that 74% is that and how much of it is really cash. So, would you risk your money on something that is 26%+ not backed by the thing they said it was backed by ?

I doubt that and that is why I honestly believe that the spread happened, people really do not care about tether anymore and they will not risky their money for tether anymore. That resulted with everyone getting away and of course there was a spread when it was done and nobody even tried arbitrage because it was way too risky.

To be honest I am surprised that things are not even worse for tether and bitfinex, this is the kind of scandal that makes people lose a huge amount of confidence, maybe the news is still too recent and the market is still not reflecting the reality of the situation, but if the accusations are true then it is possible we are going to see during the next months and years the disappearance of tether as a stable coin and of bitfinex as an exchange.

Shower thought. What if it's Bitfinex that's driving "Bitcoin up" because of its users are buying "Bitcoin up" to get their money out of the exchange. Hahaha. 8)

it wouldn't be the first time. remember what happened after march/april 2017 when bitfinex and tether lost their banking capabilities? you know, the whole wells fargo debacle. just check the charts. :)

i remember feeling at the time that it was so unsustainable because it was bitfinex/tether customers desperately exiting to crypto that was triggering the rally. you could see it in the charts of other exchanges like bitstamp too---some bitfinex users were only buying to immediately dump on other exchanges. so the bitfinex price had a huge premium over the market like we're seeing now.

but inevitably all the other exchanges ended up begrudgingly following bitfinex upwards as well......

I feel the same about this rally. Maybe it's unsustainable because the market is over-leveraged, and Bitfinex's users buying "Bitcoin up" should end in any moment now.

Ouch. Bitfinex's cold wallet has seen more outflow today. 12,511BTC has left their cold wallet making their coin holdings reach the lowest point in almost two years!!

https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/3D2oetdNuZUqQHPJmcMDDHYoqkyNVsFk9r

This definitely explains why their premium isn't shrinking. People are withdrawing like there is no tomorrow. If this continues, they'll run out of Bitcoin, and who knows what Bitfinex will pull off then.  :-X

Thanks for the link, we should keep an eye on it. I believe when everyone who wants to withdraw has withdrawn, the rally might stop. It's now clear that what's driving it are the Bitfinex whales that are buying Bitcoin up to withdraw.

I am afraid as it seems that bitfinex is just trying to get an exit as soon as possible either in a legit way or if they have to in a bad way. Look at how they are running right now, they used to be big and they had expenses and now they are seen as a criminal exchange and nobody really likes them and they had issues with tether deal as well which made it very difficult for them to keep running the company since everyone traded their tether and just got bitcoin and withdrew that from the exchange which made their reserves very low on bitcoin (and high on tether which they can't use in anything).

All they can do right now is to personally deposit a lot of tether in other exchanges and than get bitcoin for it and keep running the company for a while but I bet they would love to sell the whole exchange for something decent and get out of this mess.

they've always been seen as a criminal exchange, or at least on the BTC-E end of the spectrum. their CFO giancarlo devasini said as much years ago. they hide in shady jurisdictions and as giancarlo put it "bank like criminals". that's one of the reasons people like them. they can trade with no KYC and little risk of account suspension/investigation, and whales are generally free to spoof/manipulate the order book.

something tells me this will all blow over because somehow bitfinex always emerges unscathed. one day, they (and tether as well) will have a brutal comeuppance.

@wuvdoll
This exchange has always been quite controversial with a bad reputation.
What I see is that traders don't give a shit about Bitfinex. No impact on the Bitcoin price. Oh, yeah, for an hour it crashed a little bit, excuse me.
I think we can currently stop to be worried about the 'Bitfinex Papers', the real problems will come with the justice decision/action.

here's an interesting twist. just like 2017, what began as an exodus from bitfinex is snowballing into a legit rally.

not only have the other exchanges caught up to bitfinex, but stamp and coinbase are now $60-70 above bitfinex now! it's amazing how much cash was sitting on the sidelines on non-margin exchanges just waiting to pile into the market.

Recently, the tension around Bitfinex has grown and it seems that due to a deeper investigation by law enforcement, users began to buy Bitcoin and transfer it to other exchanges. I would not be surprised that the Bitfinex team artificially creates such a large spread and is engaged in arbitration in order to partially compensate for its losses.