Bitcoin Forum

A very good article about the "good" guys from Bitfinex :


https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-analyst-identifies-clear-spoofing-pattern-at-bitfinex


Of course, they are not the only ones who are doing that. Almost all the exchangers are making fake volumes, market manipulations and so on....a lot of illegal things.

Losers  = "YOU" (their customers).

This makes me sad, whats worrying is that it gives cryptos a bad name. However I dont think the spoofing as mentioned in the article is technically illegal for crypto trading.

I saw spoofing today or boxing in other term live and yes its frustrating. They set up walls, big ones, fake ones, restricting or moving prices by influence.

I actually mentioned it to the exchange and one wall came down in minutes.

Bitcoin CAN and WILL go UP and DOWN by spoofing, a big one is coming, they need their profits after all. I predict anytime now BTC starts to drop hundreds of dollars at a time day after day.

Why bother trading if you are not going to take profit, right.

I sold and am on cash for now, price will drop because big spoofers say so.

People trading on this and some other platforms know what they're getting into when they get there. I didn't see any solid evidence that Bitfinex is actively participating in their own markets. However, exchanges are mostly unregulated. If you want to trade on regulated places only, that's fine, and there are places for that.

I can see poloniex being next on the hitlist.

Sad to say it but they are going down that road unfortunately. :-[

Bittrex looks to be the only one to trust with the way they handled the whole bitcoin cash distribution to all their loyal customers at this point and time.

Still havent seen a real evedence that Bitfinex is making fake volumes. Thats bight be one of the disadvantages of unregulated crypto exchanges. Have no idea what to do with this but i'm afraid some people may insist on adding some kind of moderation (what is usually also not good).

Just 1 or 100 reasons BTC can NEVER be a world currency. It is just not possible to have a decentralized unregulated currency when the "bad" guys game it like this. Not saying BTC should be regulated, no no no but simply exhibit A why it will never be THE crypto for mainstream.

I really don't believe in this but instead I do believe on whales because they are the real manipulator of one coin with their big money going in the market and choosing an individual coin makes the volume big and the small players go in also and after the whales got what they want they dump it hard for small players.

Believe it these are whales, they have the cash on the exchange to cover, it is a game to them, they throw two big walls up to scare people and narrow price, it happens. They also have a LOT of money on exchanges, maybe 100's of millions or more. THEY decide the BTC price, pump/dump over and over. Watch before you know it BTC will be $2k? again so they can pump again and make more.

We are all along for a ride, nothing more.

most of the article is the author seeing what he wants to see not what really happens. spoofing has been happening everywhere and forever, and it is not restricted to bitfinex. it is available in all markets, and also it doesn't necessarily have to be bitfinex itself.

as someone who has watched the orderbooks for hours and monitored their changes i can tell you that these "walls" are a very common thing and sometimes they ever get filled (partially or completely) no matter how big they are.

i am not denying the shenanigans that different exchanges pull but i don't get why bitfinex is the only one under magnifying glass these days!
i mean have you even seen poloniex :D what they do is absurd at times!

I watch a wall huge sell wall go up on kraken today and sure enough not one order knocked on it's door for hours because they in turn threw up a buy wall well below that on the other side, kept the price in a range they wanted. Walls came down, price moved freely. We are talking about orders the size of which NEVER trade. Exchanges allow this and its BS. Influence and panic work perfectly this scheme can move the line easily BUT you need the cash on the exchange and thus these are HUGE whales.

There are too many paranoid people in Bitcoin right now. Or maybe they want the price to crash because they sold when the price went down to $1800? ;D

Some people go far to say that the market is being manipulated "MtGox style". How can an "entity" manipulate the whole market through Bitfinex if Bitfinex does not have the market dominance than MtGox once had?

the entire market pretty much goes red and green at the exact same time for all top coins but ya no way an entity can do much to influence price lolololol everyone around the world agrees to buy and sell at same time without cause, sure thing ;(

oh boy the sarcasm is strong with this one ;D

Mt Gox left a sour feeing for everyone. now whatever people see the first thing they think about is Mt Gox. they see a wall they say Mt Gox, they see a drop,... they see a rise,... they don't see anything ,....
but the fact is Mt Gox was like the only exchange back in the days. the others were completely irrelevant. the volume coming from Mt Gox was about 75%-80% of the total volume. and yet people are still comparing that kind of control with the pathetic 8%-10% volume that bitfinex has!!!

and to address your sarcasm, the same way price of anything else in the world (lets say Gold price or USD/EUR price for example) change everywhere at the same time and in the same direction, bitcoin price is also changing.
if you think everyone "everyone around the world agrees" to buy gold then the same is true about bitcoin too!!

All cryptos are subject to these forms of manipulation, so that's no particular downside to BTC. You could still regulate exchanges themselves to curb these forms of manipulation, question being how much regulation you actually want. Or maybe exchanges could start self-policing, but I'm afraid there's no incentive for them to do so.

They are right to be paranoid. Bitcoin transactions are irreversible, so once you send the money it may be gone forever, and if the private keys are gone, the Bitcoins are locked forever. And it is too easy to run away with Bitcoin than with anything else because it is virtual, no need to carry things or pass through centralized hubs.

It could be declared illegal soon now that the SEC is taking   an active interest in "spoofing". It is just plain wrong, and any exchange caught in the act should be fined by the powers that be.

I listened to a Whaleclub interview with Phil Potter where he said openly that he traded on his own exchange. I don't recall him going into much detail, but one would have to think he (as a top executive) has a lot of information (positions, stops) to use against traders. They could certainly be front-running customers, or worse. The regulated exchanges are illiquid, so they just follow Bitfinex. I just hope that Bitfinex isn't the next Mt Gox.....

if the users accept that, they deserve to lose all their funds.

I mean, someone must be very arrogant or ignorant to accept the fact that an exchanger  manipulates the price as he wants. it's not only Bitfinex. 99% from the exchangers have FAKE volumes and the sheep(their clients) accept that.


see something interesting since 2015:

https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/2t3iz5/bitfinex_cso_phillip_g_potter_admits_to_trading/

No.  Currently I want the price to crash because it's completely stupid and it makes no sense.
Any major price differences get arbitrage traded to death.  It's always possible that an exchange manipulating their own markets is going to affect other markets too.

I honestly pity anyone who is not taking profit right now.  Do you think that the price just jumps up by hundreds of dollars in a matter of hours naturally?  Of course not, it's going to come down as soon as whales think they can pick up the most cheap coins.

Well for me I know that this whole scene is unregulated so
there are no consequences for the exchanges to do whatever
they want with the markets.

Its trading, everyone is in it to make a few gains its just the
exchanges have control of some of the strings.

We all know that shady things could be taking place,
but what else can we do if we want to trade?

I actually wrote a post yesterday where I noticed this sort of behaviour at Bitfinex, where massive buy or sell orders pop up to temporarily make the market go into a certain direction, without these large orders getting bought or sold into. I personally don't see anything being wrong with this, unless it turns out that it is coming from Bitfinex itself. That being said, after everything that happened with Bitfinex, or better said, after everything they have put their customers through, only an idiot would make use of that exchange again. It actually surprised me that they managed to regain a huge load of their volumes again. I seriously thought it was done an over with Bitfinex, in terms of being the largest USD exchange.

you will be amazed of how many idiots(sheep) are around...

It's been like that for a long time.
Remember all the fake volume from China and the excuse about the 0 trading fees?

The worse thing is the thing will get uglier and uglier.
In the altcoin market they are all faking volumes to be the first in terms of volume for every coin and sites that rank exchanges based on this are first to blame then users acting like lemmings.

But nothing you can do, nothing that really should be done.
As long as it is no illegal in the country where the exchange is operating we will all have to live it it.

When you have the power to do things and none can put a finger on them... you'll end doing something. Banks have done so many things too. Seems something to take for granted. However, the exchanges also give us a good service and we are to thank them for that.

Come on! What is wrong with price manipulation huh? we have to embrace that because we don't have any choice but to utilize exchanges. What you have to do is to take advantage of it, buy every time that price goes down.

Man, you have to ride the waves! that what makes our thing fun! this game is for the strong (strong hands)  ;D

almost all the exchangers are doing that. I think Gemini and Coinbase are not doing it anymore. Being regulated, it's harder to play with your freedom. They heard that it's not so good in jail :)

so, people should try to use regulated exchangers instead of shady ones(Bitfinex is one of them).

But where an exchange is "operating" is up to interpretation. Poloniex and Bittrex operate from the US and serve US customers. Bitfinex is organized in different places (probably to keep the owners out of prison if shit hits the fan), but also serves US customers. Generally this means (to US civil and law enforcement authorities) that an exchange is operating in the USA.

Isn't spoofing and similar manipulation illegal under SEC rules? How about CFTC? I'd imagine so, but I wouldn't know where to begin looking.

Things like this have often I see and honestly I feel sorry for those who have participated in the exchange especially those who already have a balance, from this experience that I take is I do not want to have a balance in exchange so I have other assumptions to keep it in the wallet other to avoid things like friends say..

I don't think it's so black-and-white. Unfortunately, most people getting into cryptocurrencies don't understand the legal nuances around exchange regulation. They also likely don't know about order book manipulation. And unfortunately, there is often a tendency for new entrants to this market (at least for small investors and traders) to seek out altcoin markets because they "missed out on Bitcoin." This often has them rushing to exchanges like Poloniex and Bitfinex once they've gotten some money into the system and bought some bitcoin.

Yes, "buyer beware" and all that, but I don't think these people are necessarily arrogant. And it's very easy to be ignorant in this space. Maybe we all need to get burned once or twice before learning our lesson. I wish there were another way, though....

I'm not sure if you are quite correct on this

If they see that your IP comes from the US, they ask you whether you are from the US. I'm using a VPN service myself to reach Bitfinex (though I'm not from the US), and once say this warning where I had to confirm that I'm certainly not from the US. I don't know what would happen if you claimed to be from the States. So anyone more knowledgeable is welcome to chime in on this. Regarding the topic raised, all exchanges (regulated and unregulated alike) are using dirty tricks to earn a couple of bucks here and there. Even bigger exchanges like Nasdaq or CBOE had been caught front-running the orders of their clients in the past

The US unfortunately is a bad example from where to start..cause they do what they want when they want where they want.

It pretty much depends how they are looked at based on their activity as most are just running a currency exchange and I don't think there is anyone here who can claim that the price of bitcoin has been manipulated with solid proofs to stand in court.
If I'm selling you coins at 500$ can you accuse me of manipulation?

We need a better legislation that will stamp something on bitcoin (currency , asset etc) so we could have laws about trading.
It's a void here and will probably go on for years.

If it's true I won't be surprised as spoofing in finance is not something that can not be denied. It does exist as for example
http://www.financemagnates.com/forex/regulation/cftc-fines-algorithmic-trader-2-8-million-for-spoofing-in-the-first-market-abuse-case-brought-by-dodd-frank-act/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-10-02/high-speed-trader-accused-of-commodity-market-spoofing-

So why not can't they do it in the crypto market in severals exchanges?

I think It is illegal only for US stock markets https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-analyst-identifies-clear-spoofing-pattern-at-bitfinex#comment-3458611804

IIRC, this was implemented when they relaunched after the hack last year. They did it because they disallowed US customers from engaging in trading of the BFX token (with the exception of liquidating it). They also disallowed US customers from accessing margin on the exchange. But they still allowed US customers back then, and they still allow them today. I haven't logged into my account in a month or two to confirm, but I haven't seen anything to indicate that this has changed.

Fake volumes? Market manipulations?
Pump and Dump groups are very real, and they've been around for years. You just have to stay away from the small new altcoins which can easily be pushed up with little volume.

It's not really a USD exchange any more as you can't input or extract USD.

It's bizarre how short everyone's memories are. They were ravaged with outages and haircuts yet they still came back for more.

They've still said nothing about the hack, still haven't provided an audit that was promised months ago, when they lost banking they said they were going to be opening new trading pairs like CHF a week or two later. Er, nope.

Regardless of this spoofing in crypto is not illegal so it's going to happen. It's a bit less cool if it's the exchange themselves doing it with dollars that they've magically conjured into existence with Tether.

Thanks for putting this into perspective for me. I was thinking of re-adding Bitfinex into my bundle of exchanges to diversify the 3rd party risk, but it's not worth it. This place is a ticking time bomb.

because there was no hack. it's was an inside thing. the lost the banking and they will never get it back.

yes, the people are ..pffff... :)   I cannot find words. that's why sometimes I say that they deserve to lose their funds so that they can learn the lesson.  how can you use a such exchanger? just because they have a "better" API like BTC-e?   :o

Uh.
This does not look too good:
https://steemit.com/crypto-news/@cryptoblood/new-bitfinex-exchange-coming-all-things-ethereum

Bitfinex is like BTC-e; part of the "same" gang

Market manipulation, statistical exaggeration and outright lies are so rampant in the finance/investment industry.

China constructs entire cities which no one lives in (lookup: china's ghost cities) to artificially inflate their GDP. The same principle applies here if crypto exchanges are spoofing to artificially inflate btc market cap. Its not necessarily news, every country manipulates statistics, definitions and other variables to make things look better than they actually are.

Even north korea is known to exaggerate the range of its nukes to artificially inflate how much of a threat they are.

The truth is, everyone in finance/economics/real/estate/whatever does this. Its like how some people exaggerate their height or size of their penis on the internet. Except its done at the highest levels.

Everybody seems to be quietly ignoring the fact that 4-5 months later, Bitfinex doesn't have fiat deposit/withdrawals. Its BTCUSD market is completely fabricated at this point. They keep adding shitcoins to distract from it. Now they are adding an entire shitcoin exchange to distract from it. As long as the crypto bubble continues, it seems like they'll get away with it, too.

Until you consider: Why has the entire banking system blacklisted Bitfinex? Could there be something larger at play?

Then, when you consider that Tether is owned by Bitfinex' parent company (large outstanding liabilities to major exchanges like Kraken, Poloniex, Bittrex), you come to realize..... if shit hits the fan at Bitfinex, this is going to have rippling effects through the economy.

They probably have the SEC investigating them for their debt security scheme (they issued them to US customers and let them sell on the open market). And like BTC-E, they are an unlicensed MSB. That they are seemingly permanently cut off from the banking system should be worrying for people.

Things like this put the bad light on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It makes you also wonder if there is any completely legit and secure Bitcoin service that sooner or later isn't involved or is suspicious to be involved in some shady operations. News like this make me sad and worried.

If you know what is happening behind the scenes of standard 'regulated' stock exchange you would be shocked.
So you think that crypto manipulation is something immoral or illegal? On the contrary, stock, bonds and assets are the best way to make 'money out of nothing'
Banksters and Wall Steet brokers have perfected the art of cheating to the point that no one will be able to tell where millions of od dollars went.

Trading on cryptocurrencies is not regulated. So price manipulation is easier as in regulated markets. I think, that fact is independent from exchanger. Nevertheless, I am not in favor of regulating the markets and abandoning the freedom of action. If you don't want to loose your whole money, you should not risk all for trading and not trust only one exchanger. It is better to devide to several services.

@illinest, a great point. it seems there are still people with brain on this forum. you should post more and maybe the sheep will read....and understand what you are saying.

It's the banking system blacklisting Taiwan, not Bitfinex. Taiwanese regulation has been exceedingly slack which is why BFX lost their international banking, as did other places such as Okcoin.com's USD.

That slackness is exactly what attracted Bitfinex and OKcoin in the first place. Now it's being punished by international intermediaries who don't want the ball ache.

It's explained here - http://us3.campaign-archive2.com/?u=db45c09bdf20e1866bb32123f&id=e23b33309e

I would love to see POLO go under. Their customer service has been absolutely terrible. I would have to think for an average that they are just losing tons of money. I almost lost all my LTC there.

took them 30 days to finally send it to me, even though i told them to cancel the transactioin. i was sending from one exchange to another and the recieving address might change in 30 days. Told them to cancel and let me reiniiaite it, but they decided to just send it. I could have lost that all... they are messed up at POLO.

We just need more services like shapeshift and will be fine. Echanges only  exist for greed mostly.

Everyone and their mother are talking about Poloniex problems this month. I say very soon they will go down and anyone who did not withdraw their funds in this month are an absolute fool.

Alt fever and volumes are long gone. They roped in their own grandmothers to do the support tickets and verification yet they're worse than ever?

That's not a very encouraging sign.

This is a really sad to know about this manipulation; if any big scam is in progress and the exchanges are involved in it, then one day this artificial balloon will be blast and the bitcoin price will hit the bottom. People will loose the trust and there will be very difficult phase for the survival of bitcoins.

that's why I am saying that the unregulated exchangers are a plague. their greedy will make you lose your funds and BTC will collapse. don't use unregulated exchangers anymore and the BTC market will be clean and smoothly

Specially when the bank do the same  :D 2 years ago the BNP was charged with acts of manipulation, execution of false orders and collusion, as part of an investigation into a form of "cartel" exchange for several banks

That explanation worked for the first month or two. But Bitfinex announced months ago that they moved nearly all of their fiat money outside of Taiwan. Why are they still unable to process outgoing bank wires to their clients? The reason for that is -- at a minimum -- being blacklisted by Wells Fargo and all its correspondent banks (virtually the entire USD banking system). One has to wonder whether this was done at the behest of the US government.

Someone above suggested that US federal agencies may be up to something regarding Bitfinex. The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that the BTC-e indictment (filed in January 2017) and Bitfinex being cut off from the banking system (March 2017) are part of a larger operation targeting unregulated exchanges.

As long as every customer got out intact I would regard the demise of the people involved in Bitfinex as exceedingly good news for crypto.

There should only be two types of exchanges, fully regulated or properly decentralised P2P.

The third way, centralised and unregulated, delivered us Gox, Cryptsy, Mintpal, Bitfinex, BTER and god knows how many others.  

Even if the operators of these places are competent and not thieves, they'll get raped by the authorities eventually.

Long term, yes. As much as I like the idea of fast, reliable non-KYC centralized exchanges, they are not sustainable.

If the SEC/CFTC (or worse) shuts down the exchange, any funds seized would be tied up for years. And like Gox, after legal expenses, customers would get a small percentage of their funds back. And it seems very unlikely that customers would escape fully intact. As mentioned, Bitfinex and Tether are one and the same. There are many hundreds of millions of USDT held as obligations by other exchanges. It's very possible that the shutdown of Bitfinex could cause massive losses to USDT holders across the ecosystem, as it would instantly lose all its value.

Yup. But the red flags have been getting redder by the day for years on end when it comes to that crew.

It must be a case of when not if. No doubt the entire market will take a huge hit but if people aren't personally out of anything they're involved in by then I'm going to struggle to have any sympathy for them. 

Yes, it's really hard to find trustworthy exchanger. Usually they are like Big Players and sincr they are very known, are using their possibilities and manipulate price as they are able to do. By the way I trust a little to US based exchangers, there is no doubt that they are lying less than other country based exchangers. I think this situation won't be fixed.

I'm dreaming people would stick to facts instead of saying BS.

The whole thing behind this topic is this:


There isn't any proof of any wrong doing. Just one guy saying there could be something...

haha. nice shill and a legendary one  :D

it's not only "one gue saying" . I am saying that since years ago ! :)   The exchangers have fake volumes just to appear "big" and to manipulate the market.

99% from exchangers are spoofing and having fake volumes and you come to say that it's not true. OK ! LOL

Bitfinex is an unregulated shit exchanger like BTC-e, Poloniex, Kraken, all the chinese exchangers and so on. these have fake volumes and they manipulate the market as they want. is this correct for traders that a shit exchanger can dispose of funds as it wants?

don't come with "it's a free market" . a free market doesn't mean to fraud your client, to steal from him and so on.

Oh my god, this is a bad thing of exchanges, then we should cash out right now, withdraw bitcoin and fiat currency.
Fake volumes refers to amount of money on the table, right? to attract more people join in their platform?
Then, how we convert bitcoin into fiat without exchange as a middle man?
How could we measure bitcoin price without trading volume on exchanges?
Well, I am not really worry about it, as long as I treat exchanges as a 'temporary shelter' in order to convert bitcoin into cash and vice versa.

The conspiracy man in you is weak, small, and chicken-hearted

If he were a little more brave and decisive, he would tell you that this is no less than a part of a bigger plot, a plot which should eventually lead to the destruction of Bitcoin as well as other coins (i.e. the whole cryptoworld). But the real question you should have asked is whether the US federal agencies (such as those pictured at the Btc-e front page) can actually do anything substantial and detrimental (substantially detrimental) against Bitfinex today. I mean beyond what they have already done by now

What have they done, besides the CFTC giving Bitfinex a slap on the wrist? The thing about this is, these agencies take months and years to build cases. They filed that BTC-e indictment in January and sat on it for 6-7 months waiting for the time to strike. They were probably investigating for years before that.

We're now coming up on one year from the Bitfinex token scheme. I'd say the feds certainly aren't powerless here. They could start by seizing Bitfinex's domain and servers. They could likely seize a good deal of Bitfinex's fiat reserves. Same situation as BTC-e, if the feds want to go that route. That would be very detrimental for their customers (and for all those customers who just became investors via the token deal). And then there is the matter of all the Tether......

I don't know about the domain name

After all, ICANN is an American corporation so they could somehow force them to revoke the domain name for themselves. But do you know where Bitfinex servers are located exactly? If you don't know that (which seems to be the case), how are the US authorities going to seize them if they might be all placed in some obscure Chinese (Hong-Kong) data-center or even scattered all over the world? In short, do you have any real and pertinent info about the case?

Stuff like this, just makes me mad, and this will definitely give Bitcoin a bad reputation and will only further discourage new people to use Bitcoin. This is one of the reasons why Bitcoin will never become mainstream. These exchanges could always go corrupt and they could easily just manipulate the prices of bitcoin, causing them to lose a whole lot of money

Exchanges with track records like Bitfinex aren't going to be around for much longer IMO. They'll either be raided and shut down, lose any semblance of banking no matter how many corners they try to cut or lies they tell, be bought out by someone who can be arsed to make it fully legit or abandoned by their users when better options come along.

When it comes to fiat exchanges, not that it really is one any more, it's pretty much the last of its kind now.

We will all be better off when it's gone.

And which are the ones with track records UNLIKE Bitfinex?

Btcchina and Okcoin? oh, those are just as good
Gox and Mintpall?  no comment :))
Bitswamp? probably the cleanest pair of socks in the laundry bag
Coinbase ? the only one that looks so neat and clean and legal because they are running like fort knox of information and not quite an exchange more like a bank
Poloniex and Bittrex? don't make me laugh
BTCe ? this is no laughing matter , it's a sad story

You're asking for a total revamp of the system, not going to happen too soon

Gemini, Itbit, Bitstamp, GDAX, Kraken, Coinfloor and perhaps a few others.

Kraken is broken but unhacked. Bitstamp was hacked but users weren't affected. GDAX is a weird flaky place but has never been hacked and is backed by extremely deep pockets. The Japanese exchanges are now rigourously regulated and backed by proper finance heavyweights.

I think it's only a matter of time before the alt only places have to shape up or ship out. It's also likely that the above list will add more alts as time goes by too. Once more of them have margin trading the volume will move towards them too.

The revamp is happening, albeit slowly.

What about decentralized exchanges?

I mean the ones that are built in, i.e. exist in the blockchain itself? As far as I know, no major altcoin (not speaking of Bitcoin) has this functionality so far (BitShares cuts it pretty close to being one such exchange). But given the recent events (and events that are yet to follow), there might be a strong push toward such exchanges. Indeed, we would still need fiat gateways anyway, but it seems people nowadays rarely need to withdraw fiat, so this doesn't look like a primary concern here. what is your stance on the matter?

I've already said it elsewhere in this thread. We need two types of exchanges, properly regulated ones for people who are fond of their order books or fully decentralised.

Centralised, unregulated and unaccountable has been the norm so far and it's been a very consistent disaster.

Kraken is unregulated.  They can be seized anytime.  They play a very risky game on the client's funds. I don't know what's in their mind :)  

It doesn't really surprise me that some exchanges are doing things like this. It's another reason why we shouldn't store bitcoins or altcoins on exchanges. I will keep some on exchanges for trading but the bulk of my bitcoins will be held in offline wallets so I can control the private keys.

I think if we're here at bitcoin community is to lean 1 or 2 lessons about how the economic gears works ...

Regards to exchanges ... I think about the "order matching engine" and queue algorithms 

https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/216

Well, for us Americans this argument might be moot.  Seems like Bitfinex will no longer support customers in the US.  I actually enjoyed my experience with them, and also enjoyed the passive income of margin lending.  Probably off topic, but any suggestions on where I should go?  Poloniex was interesting to me but the recent outages has me spooked.

Do I personally have that info? Of course not! But we have a recent case study, as mentioned above. In that case, the US government issued a seizure of the domain; very easy on a .com TLD. Bitfinex.com is registered by a US company.

Do I know where Bitfinex servers are located? Of course not. I imagine the US government could (as with BTC-e) coordinate with law enforcement in several countries around the world to investigate, discover and seize any servers in US-friendly countries (most of the world). USD bank accounts could likely be frozen as well.

Regular folks wouldn't "have any real and pertinent info about the case." The BTC-e indictment was filed in January and unsealed in July. Similarly, any investigation into Bitfinex could already have been happening for years, and for all we know, an indictment has already been filed against them, but not unsealed.

*This is purely hypothetical speculation. Just speculating on the possibilities based on the reach of the US government (as evidenced by the BTC-e seizure), the blacklisting of Bitfinex by the legacy banking system, Bitfinex's lack of licensing as an MSB despite operating as one for years in the US, etc.

Spoof transactions, fake volumes? I don't understand why. It would be just stupid.

When you look at Poloniex or Bitfinex, it's evident that the people behind those websites have invested a lot of money in servers and software development. No doubt they can afford more than enough cryptos to make real transactions and deal large volumes.

Besides, let's say it clearly: I love Poloniex and Bitfinex. I'm using both, and my best month I made more than $1,000 trading and lending. So you understand why I'm a supporter...

So you are just speculating (as you say yourself)

Seizing a domain name is not a big deal, any domain, for that matter. But seizing domains that don't officially sit in the US jurisdiction will be another violation of sovereignty (as far as I understand it). And while technically it might not be difficult, it could be next to impossible politically. What prevents Bitfinex from registering a new domain in some US-hostile country, say, Iran? As I see it, domain names should be Bitfinex' least concern. Further, Bitfinex is a whole lot larger than Btc-e, and they had tensions with the CFTC in the past, so, first, they are more tasty than Btc-e, so to speak, and, second, they should be prepared to the US "law enforcing" agencies to go after their servers (and even more so now that Btc-e servers got seized). So the real question is whether the US already tried that but failed or they are yet to try. Besides, Bitfinex has already been blacklisted by the US banks (see Wells Fargo), so there likely was (is) something going on behind the scenes, and it kinda looks that this exchange is far better prepared to the kind of attack that Btc-e fell victim to

Seizing the domain is about making a statement. The banking world would shut them out (well, already done in Bitfinex's case), and they would forever have a target on their back and risk of seizures.


I think it's more just a matter of time. The feds take years to build these cases.

This statement is meaningless

In fact, I'd rather say that it is even detrimental to the whole initiative aimed at shutting down an exchange. When did we see that scary to every trader picture at the Btc-e site? When everything was essentially over for Btc-e, right? In this manner, seizing the domain only and placing the seizure note is futile and in fact counterproductive if they, at the same time, fail to reach out and touch servers as well as wallets. The exchange will likely fire up another domain and users will took their coins away. In two words, mission failed

I don't get it. Aren't you just ignoring the BTC-e case? Sure, the crypto should be encrypted. But due to fiat bank accounts being frozen, BTC-e is saying 45% of the money is gone. (I think they are probably pocketing a lot more than that if they do come back, given this talk of KYC)

Money laundering charges are a lot more serious than listing torrent trackers or even offering US-facing online gambling. Would you take the risks to run such an exchange? You can't step foot in most of the world for risk of extradition. And the bigger question is, why would anyone trade there? Given that they are under indictment from the US? Seems like a no-brainer to just go somewhere else.

I don't get your idea either

It looks like you think that the US is the only pebble on beach or it is the major pebble there. While the latter may certainly be true (to a degree), you should understand that while some countries (in fact, many countries) are ready to lick the boots of Uncle Sam, this is not a universal practice by any means. In other words, the claims of some US agency about money laundering is surely not something to be discarded as a non-event, but they still remain only the claims of just one country (though highly influential). You would need to pass the US Security Council resolution to make it binding to the rest of the world (at least, to most of the world)

The UN has no power to enforce anything, and no power to stop the US from robbing people blind all over the world. Maybe an exchange declared illicit by the US can hide in Iran or Somalia or the like, but I don't see why anyone would use it. Russia -- YES -- but Russia is very unfriendly to crypto exchanges. I guess there's China, but their government has recently taken a very keen interest in Bitcoin and its exchanges too...

maybe not more than 6 months from now on.

Bitcoin doesn´t need to become a world currency.
Bitcoin´s main use case is savings!

It has outperformed any other liquid asset class over the past 8 years since its inception!

You may want to read more about the UN Security Council

Decisions and resolutions unanimously accepted by the permanent members of the UN Security Council are binding to all UN member states. And it is basically the same as US doing anything on their own (what they typically do anyway), but in this case their actions would be agreed upon by all major world powers like China and Russia. So if, say, the latter two support a proposal to universally ban Bitcoin, that would mean that the US has essentially got a carte blanche to do everything they see appropriate in this regard everywhere in the world

The UN (and Security Council) are irrelevant here. Could you point out otherwise? The US will not pass any resolution that will inhibit its abilities to coordinate globally to take down what it perceives as illicit or nefarious actors. If the UNSC does nothing, the US can continue as always. Otherwise, the US can just veto any resolution.

As was mentioned, Russia or China could provide BTC-e cover, but why would they? The bigger question is why would a prospective customer use an exchange that is under indictment from the United States (i.e. the world police)? That's asking to get your shit seized. Anyone with a brain would just use a different exchange.

as you can notice, there are not too many with a brain  :)   they are like the sheep. how can someone use an exchanger like BTC-e , Bitfinex, Kraken, Poloniex? it's amazing   :)

Well, I had some funds on BTC-e, so I suppose I was a sheep, too. There were reasons to do so, and I won't go into the details. :P

My position has always been the unregulated exchanges could be taken down at any time. If you were to use them, always spread around the risk to multiple exchanges, and minimize time holding funds on them. The BTC-e seizure makes things more urgent now for users on exchanges like Bitfinex, Kraken, etc. to get their funds out while they can.

You miss the whole point of my posts here

I'm not saying that the US can't veto any UNSC resolution that they don't quite like. What I'm saying is in fact goes beyond that. I specifically made it clear that if a resolution would be accepted unanimously, that would mean the US accepting it as well (can you read?), and it will be binding to the whole world. Otherwise, no country is obliged to follow whatever the US asks them to do (unless they have bilateral agreements, of course). Indeed, the governments that are eagerly licking the boots of Uncle Sam will do anything anyway, but this would still be a far cry from the whole world. If you can't really read it (and understand what you read), China and Russia are in no way going to follow the directions or proposals of the US government unless these are accepted as a UNSC resolution. In other words, if the US really wants "to coordinate globally to take down what it perceives as illicit or nefarious actors", it should receive a UNSC resolution for that. As simple as it gets, hope this helps

The OP is a persistent troll who targets bitfinex, it is safe to ignore him, and almost everything he posts is either out of context, is FUD, is a lie, or similar. I suspect the OP is employed by one of their competitors.

It is possible to move USD into/out of bitfinex if you are a corporate customer, or are an individual in certain jurisdictions.

The article linked in the OP is full of baseless speculation and states things as facts that he would have no way of knowing.

Quickseller (you have -241 trust  LOL ), what's a lie, what's FUD? :)  I am saying the facts.  

Bitfinex is a gang like BTC-e and they will disappear in the same way. This is the truth. Where is Bitfinex regulated ?  How can a company in good standing to only send wires "in certain jurisdictions"? :)  
show me that on the Bitfinex website(the withdrawal button for USD)

Do you have some evidence for this? Past the "one-time withdrawals" through their lawyer's trust account, I haven't heard of any such capabilities in several months. Apparently, you could get money in or out if you have access to Taiwanese bank accounts at some point, but that's not clear anymore, since they said they moved their money out of Taiwan due to the banking compliance situation there.

another shit made of Bitfinex :   https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/are-fraudulent-tethers-being-used-for-margin-lending-on-bitfinex-5de9dd80f330

This entire explosion from March would've been a lot more reassuring had it not been tied up in this. There are really only two options here. Either the rest of the market has moved on and so much further up by the time the tide draws out on Bitfinex that it no longer matters, or we're going to have another 2014/15.

With knobs on.

You forgot the 3rd possible option. Bitfinex could make so much money from their exchange operation that they can easily replenish
any outstanding funds and unbacked Tethers.
They are collecting a part of their fees in BTC and could sell them at other exchanges at the current high prices of more than 4k $ / BTC.
It is not all obvious that they are not doing that already.

how can they receive "so many funds" when they haven't any bank since April? Yes, through fake(generated) Tether funds. :)   

This company is a pure fraud and the people continue to use them...  ::)

Yes, everyone is aware BitFinex is a SCAM EXCHANGE and they are pumping the prices up using fake Tethers and Spoofy bot. Next MtGox is here

https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/why-wont-bitfinex-tether-publish-already-existing-audit-reports-as-they-promise-future-bitfinex-51d26d14d226

https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/are-fraudulent-tethers-being-used-for-margin-lending-on-bitfinex-5de9dd80f330

http://omnichest.info/lookupadd.aspx?address=3MbYQMMmSkC3AgWkj9FMo5LsPTW1zBTwXL

Avoid is scam exchange and inform the authorities.

Another shit made of Bitfinex:


https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/wash-trading-bitcoin-how-bitfinex-benefits-from-fraudulent-trading-8bd66be73215

Stay away of this criminal company. They will be closed soon.

is bitfinex truely a fraud and price maniuplator?

No. The OP is a professional troll.

I'm curious if he receives any remuneration for his efforts and hard toil

He seems to be hell-bent on slinging mud at various cryptoexchanges. I've seen him actively attacking Btc-e when it got taken over by the FBI. I don't know if he is still active in the threads about WEX (the successor to Btc-e), but now he is posting crap about Bitfinex. It would be interesting to see what Bitcoin exchange he doesn't try to defame, and thus we could trace the roots and source of his hatred (you know what I mean). When I asked him about that, he said that he was just selflessly warning people (or something to that tune), though the way he was talking to people who lost money at Btc-e left me feeling very dubious and suspicious about his real intents

 :D

Quickseller, with your "Trust: -242", you come and say about trolling?  ??? :D    What trolling? :)

These are the facts. Bitfinex is a fraudulent company without any financial license and more than that, it's a criminal company by doing MANY illegal things as : market manipulation, stealing and defrauding its clients.

Defamation is something else. All the exchangers without financial license, are illegal. Period. :)
They are plague, a cancer and this industry cannot evolve because of them.  Bitfinex is one of these plagues.

Once Coinbase, Bitstamp, Gemini, Itbit took their licenses, I didn't say any word against them. This is the way that you should sustain.

Now, you support criminal companies like Bitfinex, Kraken, Poloniex, etc (without financial license). You have to realize that by supporting these shit companies, you make a disservice to you too.

Yes, BTC-e was a criminal company too and they continue their shits through Exmo, WEX and few others. There are many sheep that they will follow them; most of them are fraudsters too :)

ANOTHER FACT about Bitfinex (a criminal company):

https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/bitfinex-never-repaid-their-tokens-bitfinex-started-a-ponzi-scheme-86a9291add29

Bitfinex, the criminal organisation is claiming that 30 mil is missing from its shit, Tether:   ;D

https://www.coindesk.com/tether-claims-30-million-stable-token-stolen-attacker/


Why is Tether, operating a money transmitter under an attorney trust account? This is illegal.

If you want to follow in real-time Bitfinex online reputation crisis, you may try to check this page from time to time: https://www.reputaction.com/en/bitfinex-online-reputation

Tether has added 50M USDT tokens in the past 24 hours!    ;D ;D ;D

http://omnichest.info/lookupadd.aspx?address=3MbYQMMmSkC3AgWkj9FMo5LsPTW1zBTwXL&


They  print shitloads. Then they will short bitcoin to hell or some kind of ‘hack’ will take place.  ::)

The price of BTC will usually increase within 5-6 hours of the Tether being printed. The Bitfinex pumping is doing a huge bubble and the sheep are passive as usual :)

Bitfinex = Tether = criminals

I wonder how much more or less friction their new USD channels will have.

Assuming they're routed normally there's now no reason to going through Tether, if anyone actually ever did. Will this calm it down, stop it completely, or will their gay abandon raise even more questions if it continues?

I still think that USDT / Bitfinex is only partially responsible for Bitcoin's growth this year. The market was ready for Bitcoin's re-awakening and that's how we got here.

Still, it does indeed look like USDT is heading for an iceberg. Question being whether Bitcoin is on the same ship or if Bitfinex is going to be the only casualty.

Is there anything like EUROT?

Or is it just a matter of time till it comes about? Bitfinex may be moving away from Tether, though I don't really know how inseparable they are. Are they essentially the same entity, so when Tether goes to hell, Bitfinex will follow? Or could they try to make it into a separate, stand-alone something which lives and, well, dies entirely on its own? That said, I don't really think that Bitcoin is on board with Tether, the latter seems to be only a small spot on the sun

BFX and Tether have the same parent company and the same personnel pretty much. I assume they've minimised overlap where possible. As far as I can tell Tether's official 'business model' is interest on the real USD, if it exists, but that's not even going to keep pace with inflation in most places.

I think people would be ill advised to underestimate the effect Tether has had. It's fresh money on the biggest exchange. That's a doubling of effect as other exchanges follow its moves and most of the money flying on exchanges is endlessly recycled.

It's easy to forget how big USDT is with alts. There might be more of an effect on them, but nothing would get out of it unscathed.

I've seen NZDT (New Zealand Dollar Token) based on the WAVES platform being used / issued by cryptopia.co.nz, but that seems to be only exchange supporting this token -- well, apart from the WAVES trading platform itself, I suppose.

EURT may just be a matter of time, but so far I don't see any likely issuers. The only exchanges that I can think of right now that support EUR trading are linked to the traditional banking anyways, fairly transparent and fully AML / KYC compliant -- which makes issuing something like EURT an unnecessary evil.



Indeed, I also think that alts will get hit harder by a possible USDT collapse than BTC. Most alts are traded on exchanges that can be only reached via BTC or USDT in the first place.

facts :

https://medium.com/@michaelx777/is-tether-being-used-for-money-laundering-34b29fdc2b74

Um, started off OK and then finished with a Bitshares shillfest.

Crypto writers really need to up their subtlety more than few tads.

Anyway here's some more fun comments from a BFX employee - https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/7fsfwl/daily_discussion_monday_november_27_2017/dqfjo1s/?context=3

 the essence remains.

Bitfinex is a disease, a criminal organisation. this is not  tads (SF stories)

Bitfinex didnt pay his hosting bill in Italy and run away.Itaian National judge will investigate that case

https://twitter.com/jnardiello/status/936031581810184193

I don't think that person is very credible to be honest.

I don't think you are honest too. You always defend the fraudsters from Bitfinex without having any argument. Are you part of their criminal gang or what? :)

That guy alleges to be a former engineer for bitfinex, but he also has tweeted several anti-bitfinex tweets, which at best shows a negative bias towards his claimed former employer.

Also, it is my understanding that bitfinex paid to keep its prior servers intact for evidentiary purposes after last August's hack, so his claim is likely to be false anyway.

mysterious institutions are buying hundreds of millions of Tethers from an unlicensed company, hacked three times now and never provided a single answer about the so called "authorities investigation", and then a FOMO (fear of missing out man) buying Bitcoins on their exchange.

 totally plausible.   :D

Another $25m fraudulent Tether fresh off the printer:


http://omnichest.info/lookupadd.aspx?address=3MbYQMMmSkC3AgWkj9FMo5LsPTW1zBTwXL

BTC price will rise again.  :D

The 'institution' buying the worthless Tethers, is Bitfinex themselves. Using customer funds to buy worthless Tethers from a company owned and controlled by the Bitfinex executives.


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DQBnhJrVAAAcNoe.jpg:large

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DQBnhJrVAAAcNoe.jpg:large


If you read the whole paragraph it clearly explains that Bitfinex buys the Tethers with its customers USD when they want to withdraw in USDT. By definition, if customers are buying Tethers they are not worthless.


Obviously, there is nothing remotely fraudulent about that.


Yes.

670 Million Tethers out of 814 million tethers on margin markets

200 million Tethers generated since Nov 17, 2017

Remember , Bitfinex/Tether lost their bank accounts since April.  :)

Tethers are not being printed based on people buying Tethers. Tethers are printed are not backed by USD in a bank account.

Tether is a fraud like Bitfinex. You don't need to much knowledge to see that; you just have not being blind :)

Untrue. Tether's banks stopped accepting international wire transfers due to a wider banking issue in Taiwan that also affected other companies there. Those that could use intermediary banks were still able to deposit and withdraw. Bitfinex has recently reopened its USD withdrawal and deposits as well as adding EUR.


This is complete speculation not based on any fact and as you well know the existence of the USD backing Tethers has recently been verified by a reputable New York accountancy firm.


You have to willfully misrepresent the facts to make a case for that. Anyone would need to be blind not see that your case is only made by leaving out part of the information.

https://twitter.com/MrChrisEllis/status/936686197593853952

Bloomberg will be running a feature on someone who tried and failed to get real USD out of Tether. I assume he wasn't one of their 'institutional investors'.

Interesting to see how BFX will respond. They're using the old KYC chestnut.

it is very strange that KYC procedure is made by an illegal company without any financial license. :)

KYC/AML procedures must be made by a KYC officer according to the gov. authority who give you the license.  How can you trust your ID and other docs to shit like Bitfinex or other illegal exchangers?

Bitfinex is out of law even in BVI where they are registered. BVI requires a financial license for the services that Bitfinex is doing.

Bitfinex is usually the entity purchasing USDT from tether, in response to customer withdrawal requests of USDT, who generally send those USDT to other exchanges.


There is fairly clearly a smear campaign against bitfinex that has been going on for a long time now. It would not be crazy to suggest that whoever is behind the smear campaign bought up $1,000,000 worth of USDT with the intention of trying to redeem them without giving up KYC documentation.

If this was the case, you should be easily able to name 3 companies that were affected by the banking issues in Taiwan aside from Bitfinex and Tether.
I´m waiting for your reply.


Irrespective of the verisimilitude of this statement, this is pretty alarming. After all many people have claimed for months that institutional investors are buying
all these Tether and they are the ones, who are easily able to wire money in and out of Tether. Now we see that the entity that purchases all the USDT is actually
Bitfinex itself and not the institutional investors that people were ecstatic about.

This is a huge red flag and doesn´t alleviate my doubts about the whole Tether situation at all.

Institutional customers wire USD to bitfinex, either those same, or other customers subsequently attempt to withdraw USDT from bitfinex, then bitfinex will 'top off' their hot wallet of USDT by transferring USD from bitfinex's bank account to tether's bank account in exchange for USDT being sent to bitfinex, and bitfinex processing those USDT withdrawal request.

This is not complicated. Nor is it different from what a bank will do when a customer wants to withdraw (very) large amounts of physical cash from their bank account.

as I said for many times, the 'institution' buying the worthless Tethers, is Bitfinex themselves.

Institutional investors will NEVER use an unaudited unaccountable company, unlicensed company, a company without an official bank account in the last 7 months and  3 times hacked. Let's not forget that Bitfinex is banned by the US banks. Now, they are using shell companies in order to open new bank accounts. :)

I'm not sure how I feel about this. As shady as Tether is, I wasn't quite ready to see the Tether FUD aired on Bloomberg. And presumably this story will be picked up by other mainstream outlets as well, because the media loves Bitcoin FUD!

I guess this is why they hired Torossian for that PR offensive. They are running out of excuses for their inability to redeem USDT, and it seems like they can smell the PR shitstorm coming.

I wonder what it'll do to the price. We have to consider Tether's position in the larger ecosystem. If USDT holders start panicking, that could mean a rush out of USDT and into cryptocurrencies. One would assume this kind of FUD would drive prices down, but I'm not so sure...

The fact that USDT almost always trades very close to $1 disagrees with this assertion.

Sure, because hundreds of millions of fake USDT were pumped until now.

...or maybe a smart institutional investor sent its money to the Bitfinex black hole banks to buy tethers to buy bitcoin.  ::) :D

I know that exchanges aren't fully honest and most of them do this kind of stuff. Take Yobit by example, I am tired of that shit listing shit coins with no blockchain and using fake volumes. And also people use bots to make the sam damn thing, manipulation. This won't stop and all we can do is use the trusteable exchanges only.

Can regular customers redeem Tether, though? I remember seeing reports that no one could redeem any as of months ago. Maybe it's true that "only large corporate customers" can, but no one can confirm that anyone can at all. No funds have come forward and said they use Tether.

I tend to distrust companies unless proven otherwise.

There are other market factors at play, like lack of market information re: fundamentals, need for short term USD rails that outweigh third party risk, etc.

what large corporate customers would use a company like Bitfinex? Let's get real. These are only inventions. There are no large corporate clients :)

the only "large corporate customer" for Tether is Bitfinex itself.

As has been pointed out to you already Bitfinex's customers' buyer Tethers is not even remotely suspicious.



I'll give you one, Okex. It was the case that it was a Taiwanese crack down on banks requiring higher levels of AML and KYC for cryptocurrency exchanges and not a problem specific to Tether.


It would be, but as Tether is not an "illegal company" it is perfectly normal that when someone makes a withdrawal request for $1m that they would need to satisfy KYC and AML so that Tether did not put itself in the position of getting prosecuted for money laundering.


If that was true why has the British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission not shut them down?

As ever you are misinformed. iFinex Limited the parent holding company is registered in BVI. Bitfinex is registered in Hong Kong and holds the relevant MSO license it needs to trade from there.

Bitfinex is registered in Hong Kong and holds the relevant MSO license it needs to trade from there.  

Please provide an evidence for that.  Bitfinex doesn't have ANY financial license anywhere so they cannot request any KYC documents. Any financial license company MUST have a real office with staff and everything the law requires. Also, all the financial license companies must show their license number on their website ; look to websites like Coinbase, Bitstamp, Gemini and to any other licensed forex company.

Bitfinex doesn't have any physical office. The so called office from HK belongs to a lawyer who registered their company.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/2dohjg/im_josh_rossi_from_bitfinex_here_to_talk_about/cjtxire/

https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/2dqyng/who_is_bitfinexs_banking_partner/

https://hkdir.co/co/renrenbee-limited

You show me as evidence some forums. I am not a sheep, mate.   LOL

Please provide me a place on Bitfinex website where it's referring to this license.


https://www.bitfinex.com/legal/terms

Governing Law: These Terms of Service shall be governed by and construed and enforced in accordance with the laws of the British Virgin Islands, and shall be interpreted in all respects as a British Virgin Islands contract. Any claim or action arising from or related to these Terms of Service shall be governed by and construed and enforced in accordance with the laws of the British Virgin Islands

Where do you see HK, where do you see any financial license number?  Remember, a license is NOT a secret and it must be publish on their website IF exists :)  

I can make a website and saying on forums that I am bank. Am I a bank?

All you have done so far in this thread is making claims that have turned out to be false. I am far more inclined to believe 2 employees of Bitfinex over you.


The absence of that implies nothing.


You could, but you would be very unlikely to gain any customers whereas Bitfinex is extremely successful. If your claims had even the smallest hint of truth in them that would not be the case.

If Bitfinex was unlicenced do you not think that the HK authorities would have shut them down?


It's not like they just sprung up and nobody had time to prosecute them.

Maybe you are part of their staff.  ;D

Recommendation:   https://eservices.customs.gov.hk/MSOS/wsrh/001s1?searchBy=R

See if you can find any RENRENBEE LIMITED.  :)

RENRENBEE LIMITED it's not licensed anymore.  RENRENBEE LIMITED is simple registered company and nothing more.   The website is referring to Bitfinex as a BVI company, period.

The absence of the license number from the Bitfinex website implies that they are not licensed.

What company would have a financial license and it will keep hidden ? Also, the LAW requires them to publish their license number on website. I said that for 4-5 times already :)

You don't have to believe me. Ask Bitfinex to provide you this information (their financial license number). It MUST be a public information.
Don't try to fool us, mate.

Why do you always ignore the pertinent question?



Whether or not that information is out of date you cannot answer why neither the authorities in Hong Kong or the British Virgin Islands has either moved to shut them down or prosecute. The very fact that hasn't happened is more than a strong indication that they are fully compliant with the laws in both those countries. All you can do is spout nonsense about them being an "illegal company" if that was the case they wouldn't still be going.
 

I actually did info about license number:
Funny enough I did found it in tether whitepaper, along with this:
But the sad thing about it - both of this licenses does not check out with corresponding agencies. You can check it yourself using these links:
https://eservices.customs.gov.hk/MSOS/wsrh/001s1
https://www.fincen.gov/msb-registrant-search

In best case scenario - Tether/Bitfinex had these licenses at some point, but decided not to renew em after banking cut (no more links with customer funds - no AML/KYC for clients)
Worst case scenario - these 'licenses' were manufactured to gain community trust

I don't avoid any answer. it's the same as it was with BTC-e. BTC-e was registered in Cyprus, UK and these ones didn't shut them down. US did it :)    please don't say that BTC-e was fully compliant with the laws in both those countries     :D

fully compliant = financial license and Bitfinex doesn't own any. that means it's an illegal exchanger beside the other frauds.

btc-e was actively laundering stolen money...

I don't believe that Hong Kong is relevant anymore. There used to be some parent company registrations there and supposedly some operations are still run from HK. But if you read Bitfinex's terms, all services are governed by British Virgin Islands law. BVI regulators haven't done anything for the same reason Bitfinex sought jurisdiction there. BVI is a rubber stamp regulator, like many independent island nations. They rarely enforce any laws against anyone. For anything.


Whether Bitfinex is in compliance with BVI law is irrelevant when it comes to the US government waving its dick around. Compliance in the British Virgin Islands =/= Bitfinex is safe from regulatory or law enforcement action from other governments. Just look at BTC-e. Bitfinex offered services to US users since 2013, so the US government can/will claim jurisdiction if they want to come after Bitfinex.


Supposedly. More importantly, BTC-e was also indicted for operating an unlicensed money service business, something that Bitfinex did in the USA for several years.

Yes, you did.


You are trying to argue that Bitfinex is an "illegal company" because they don't comply with licensing requirements in the jurisdictions they are registered in by comparing it to BTC-e getting busted by the US Justice Dept for money laundering. Your logic and stretching of facts have hit a new low even for you.

In other news:
https://www.coindesk.com/bitfinex-vs-bitfinexed-exchange-hires-law-firm-challenge-critics/

I don't mean to pile on the FUD, but this seems like a straw man. The comparison between Bitfinex and BTC-e does not stem from money laundering. There were two charges in the BTC-e indictment. One was for money laundering. The other was for operating an unlicensed MSB. Why would BTC-e be guilty of the latter, but not Bitfinex?

It sounds like you guys are conveniently ignoring that Bitfinex was also flouting US law for years, just like BTC-e was. And given Bitfinex's lax KYC requirements and lack of any cryptocurrency withdrawal limits, what makes you think that the US government wouldn't charge them with conspiracy to launder money? Just because they haven't yet?

The BTC-e seizure was "cleaning house." It won't be the last. The only exchanges I'm comfortable dumping USD on right now are GDAX and Gemini.....

This is actually a valid concern, unlike anything that the OP has come up with. Bitfinex has taken the step of barring all US customers but yes there is a possibility that the US will still go after them for past offences.

past offences? Bitfinex is illegal in any country because ALL the jurisdictions require a financial license for what Bitfinex is doing. :)

Do you think that they don't need a license in EU or Australia or even Belize? Yes, they need it.

Bitfinex is like BTC-e and like many other unlicensed exchangers = fraudulent companies.   These exchangers must be closed. Only when all the exchangers will be regulated, BTC will be mainstream.

Just because you keep repeating it doesn't make it any truer or make any more sense.

please show me where I am wrong (with valid proofs). Are they licensed or what? :)

Please show me valid proof that they are breaking any law or are trading without a required licence in any jurisdiction they do business in.

a very simple example: Bitfinex is trading in Japan and they NEED a license for that :)

https://bitlegal.io/2017/04/09/jfsa-fintech-support/

Really? You were telling us that they are in the British Virgin Islands.

Bitfinex is not licensed,there is no proof that bitfinex/tether has agreement with banks,so 1-1 redeem usdt-usd is pure fiction,instead paradise papers are showing that bitfinex has offshore account in Panama

Last fun is Bitfinex hire law firm to open lawsuit against one guy from twitter,same like thay did with wells.&fargo

https://www.coindesk.com/bitfinex-vs-bitfinexed-exchange-hires-law-firm-challenge-critics/

Bitfinex operates worldwide. According to your words, if they are registered in BVI that means they can trade in USA as well...because they are not based in USA.

As you can KNOW, it' NOT true. :)  

But you are either an ignorant, a shill or Bitfinex staff.  It's OK but try to make your homework before trying to argue... The silence is sometimes better ;)

"Trading in" means having a business presence in not having customers in. Under your logic, every online business would have to apply for licences in every jurisdiction in the world.

The US is well known for its attempts to police the world, Japan not so.

Taking the example of online casinos many have chosen to block customers of certain countries if they feel that there is a chance of some legal attempt to impose another countries laws on them. Bitfinex's move with US customers shows this pattern is starting to spread.


I know what I know and I will leave others to decide which of us is better informed.

Bloomberg article https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-05/mystery-shrouds-tether-and-its-links-to-biggest-bitcoin-exchange

Regulators gov agencies dont be funny,usa shuted down btc-e becouse of Russia,what a brave FBI action to arrest btc-e russian owner,look our great work,how we protect you,commedy

The US government interprets jurisdiction based on operational presence (corporate registrations, headquarters), jurisdiction of customers, or both. If you read the BTC-e indictment, the DOJ established that BTC-e offering services to Americans partially formed the basis for charging them:

From page 2 of the indictment (https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/press-release/file/984661/download):


Online businesses are supposed to apply for licenses where they operate (read: where their customers reside) if their business requires licensing. In many cases, licenses are not required. However, money services businesses (or equivalent) are required to be registered and licensed in many jurisdictions, such as the US.

Whether or not an exchange should obtain a license is a matter of risk analysis. The likelihood of enforcement actions is usually the main factor in deciding whether to get the proper licenses.

"The likelihood of enforcement actions is usually the main factor in deciding whether to get the proper licenses.  "

"Online businesses are supposed to apply for licenses where they operate (read: where their customers reside) if their business requires licensing"

GREAT POINT !

Conclusion: all the countries request license for a business like Bitfinex because it's a financial business; all the countries(even BVI, Belize, Bermuda, etc) have laws regarding to the trading and operating as money transmitter. Indeed, not many countries enforce their laws but it doesn't mean that that business is legal.

Bitfinex like many(most) other exchangers are illegal. I am not even mention the other shits that Bitfinex is doing, just the absence of their license. So, Bitfinex is a criminal (lawbreaker, felonious) company..

It's not hard to understand... :)

As I pointed out in my last post this is specific to US law and their interpretation of whether they can enforce their laws on other countries. I also said that Bitfinex has responded to this action by the US by barring all US based customers. This is the same as has happened in the online gaming industry and so far has been successful in allowing them to continue their lawful businesses wherever they are based.

You gave Japan as an example of where Bitfinex is breaking the law. Where does Japanese law state that?


You neglect the fact that most of these countries do not specify Cryptocurrencies specifically in their laws and currently do not requires these businesses to meet any more licencing requirements than they already do.


Still not true.


It is for you.

Great analysis of the situation.

However, I think there is at least one other reason why they decided to set up shop in the British Virgin islands
apart from the "rubber stamp regulation". If you are running a questionable business it makes sense to incorporate in
one of these exotic islands, because it is incredibly hard, expensive and tiresome to litigate against an offshore business.

In the hypothetical case that Bitfinex will face lawsuits by investors or traders they are pretty safe, because not many
are going to be willing or even be able to sue them before a court in the British Virgin islands.

Therefore I´d argue that the two big reasons to incorporate in the BVIs are the lax regulation and the protection
from lawsuits that offshore jurisdictions offer.

Again, I will give you a simple example of a REAL forex company(they trade BTC too) and their licenses:

http://www.avatrade.com/forex/cryptocurrencies/bitcoin    (see the bottom):

AVA Trade EU Ltd is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland (No.C53877)
AVA Trade Ltd is regulated by the B.V.I Financial Services Commission (remember BVI? Bitfinex is registered in this country. Did you notice any license number from  the B.V.I Financial Services Commission) ?
Ava Capital Markets Australia Pty Ltd is regulated by the ASIC (No.406684)
Ava Capital Markets Pty is regulated by the South African Financial Services Board (FSP No.445984)
Ava Trade Japan K.K. is regulated in Japan by the FSA (No.1662) and the FFAJ (No.1574)

This is how it should look a genuine licensed company.

Do you think that this company is stupid and they just throw the money away on these licenses? I guess not. :)

I can give more examples.  See https://www.oanda.com    (at the bottom/footer) . See a difference between a shit like Bitfinex and licensed company like Oanda.com ?


Can you show me where can you see one license number on Bitfinex website? You stated above that they have a such thing. Where?

I used to have an account with them. They have offices in all those countries and trade forex, equities and commodities too, hence requiring licences in those countries, unlike Bitfinex.

Japan, Germany and many other countries requires a license for trading digital currencies like BTC.

I can show you where BaFin (German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority) requires a licence for trading Bitcoin.

Does Bitfex own a Japan or EU financial license? I don't see it :)

From all you are saying is that Bitfinex don't need any financial license anywhere.  Right? :D

Sometimes you can actually get something half right, but unfortunately, the other half defeats you.

Another pertinent question you didn't answer.



It doesn't need one.

Unlike the US they don't consider licenses to be required of companies operating in foreign countries just because some of their citizens may use the service.


At the moment it would be only the US and even that is dubious due to the fact that the regulators reinterpreted the existing laws after the fact. That being said the US justice system is a conviction machine and they will always win in their own courts so it is possible that a few crypto exchanges may get a fine. With the BTC-e example, it is the money laundering that is the serious issue.

according to your thinking, all these regulated companies are idiots because they have financial licenses in many countries.

example: AVA Trade is registered in Ireland so they wouldn't need a financial license in Japan, BVI or South Africa because these countries  don't consider licenses to be required of companies operating in foreign countries , right? :)

another example is Bitstamp. They were stupids too by taking a EU license, correct?

You can earn good money as "adviser". I am wondering how these companies didn't think about that too... ::) :D    


BTC-e  was closed for  operating an unlicensed money service business, money laundering, and related crimes.

Not just my thinking but the regulations and laws applicable in those countries.


No, they are following the legal requirements of each jurisdiction.


AvaTrade has offices including:

Minatoku Akasaka
2-18-1
Tokyo

70 Grayston Drive, second floor
Sandton 2196
Johannesburg

They also use a holding company in BVI that owns some of the subsidiaries. These are operating as Forex, equities and commodities brokers in the said jurisdictions and therefore require an appropriate licence.


Bitstamp is based in Luxembourg
Bitstamp Europe S.A.
10 rue Antoine Jans
L-1820 Luxembourg
Luxembourg

So obviously is subject to EU regulation.


You can earn even better money as a Corporate Attorney and these companies certainly use them.


As I stated in the last post, money laundering was the serious offence and licence issues an incidental charge that on its own would have probably only resulted in a fine.

Let me ask you another couple of questions about AvaTrade.
Why do they only hold licences in the countries they have a physical presence?
Do you think they do not accept customers from all the other countries in the world?

According to the mainpage of Bitstamp (bitstamp.net) they are not based in Luxembourg.

If you scroll to the bottom you can see that they are operating out of London:
Bitstamp Ltd
5 New Street Square
London EC4A 3TW
United Kingdom

They do have an office in Luxembourg though (at the address that you provided) and another one in New York (I guess
they plan to enter the US market in the future). The main operations are based in London.

They should be able to continue to service the European market due to their license in Luxembourg even
if Britain actually leaves the European Union in the next years.

@Samarkand

I'm pretty sure I remember them being based in Luxembourg when the first started but it doesn't really change any of what I was saying. If they didn't have a Luxembourg office they wouldn't require a licence in the EU after Britain becomes free again.
 

I remember them being based in Slovenia originally. If I´m not mistaken the two original founders (Nejc Kodric is one of them, I don´t remember the other
Co-Founder) are Slovenian nationals, too.

But this is not really the topic of this thread.

What are your thoughts on the future of Bitfinex? I remember that you claimed regularly that Bitfinex was used by institutional customers due
to it having the biggest exchange volume. Now that CBOE and CME are launching their Bitcoin futures in the next 1-2 weeks and NASDAQ is
going to offer it in 2018 as well, these institutional investors will surely leave Bitfinex towards more legitimate brokers? After all they will
be able to trade the CME contracts at reputable brokers like Interactive Brokers and so on, which offer deposit guarantees and are registered
in less questionable jurisdictions than Bitfinex.

Clearly Bitfinex will suffer hugely from this? I can´t really envision a scenario where institutional investors will prefer Bitfinex over one
of the legit fiat brokers.

The CBOE et el., are not going to offer 24 hour trading, which puts anyone with an open position while the markets are closed at risk of the market moving against them, potentially to the extent they have negative equity in their accounts while the markets are closed. The circuit breakers will also make the futures market unattractive because traders may not be able to take advantage of some of the large swings in price, and may be unable to exit positions if the market goes a certain way.

I would expect liquidity and trading volumes to increase on bitfinex while the futures market is open while traders take advantage of discrepancies in price.  The leverage trading that bitfinex offers is arguably better than what is being offered on the futures exchanges because of 24 hour trading.

Interesting viewpoint.

However, I´d argue that the circuit breakers will prove to be less relevant than you currently think.
As more (institutional) money flows into Bitcoin the market cap will obviously grow even further, which should result in less
volatility. When BTC was having a market cap in the single-digit billions the swings were more extreme, because
whales could easily move the price.

These days the ecosystem is much more mature and the high market cap makes it more difficult to cause big
price swings. E.g. years ago a 10M $ (worth of BTC) market sell would have easily caused a decline of 20-30 % and nowadays this
would cause a less pronounced market move.

Therefore I think that the circuit breakers at 20 % won´t really be triggered unless a really extreme event happens.

mysterious institutions are buying hundreds of millions of Tethers from an unlicensed company, without an official bank account from April till December,  hacked three times now and never provided a single answer about the so called "authorities investigation", and then a FOMO (fear of missing out man) buying Bitcoins on their exchange.

 totally plausible.   ;D :D



it's funny how TheQuin, has firstly mentioned that Bitfinex is licensed in HK through  RENRENBEE LIMITED ( HK) and now, he doesn't mention anymore about the non-existent Bitfinex license in HK . More that that, he is stating that Bitfinex doesn't need one at all.   ;D   LOL

TheQuin, try to keep the line.

As I said back here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2074565.msg25734460#msg25734460 whether or not that information is out of date doesn’t actually change anything.

It is a lot funnier how you ignore the pertinent questions again.


That could be because the answers to those question prove that your arguments are completely wrong.


More unsubstantiated lies and FUD.


Leaving aside the pejorative language used to discredit Bitfinex it is an interesting question. Before I get on to that Interactive Brokers are a retail outfit and no institutions would use them.
I’m really not sure what the impact will be overall, so this is more idle speculation than a prediction. I think it brings a whole lot of new money to the game that could actually increase the overall volume to an extent that both crypto exchanges and the futures markets could see an increase in trade. Many of those trading the futures will be doing so to hedge positions in actual Bitcoins. Quickseller made valid points about market hours and circuit breakers both of which increase the need to be able to hedge and crypto exchanges are the only place to effectively do it.

For some reason the withdrawals are taking 24hrs+, for some people even longer than 2 days, for small amounts, let alone big ones.

Bitfinex and CEX are sharing the same bank account. Their bank is  :    Bank Spółdzielczy w Skierniewicach  (Cooperative Bank in Skierniewice).

why do they share an account name? :)    

As you know, Bitfinex didn't have any official bank account until November 2017 because their accounts were closed in April 2017.

Why does Bitfinex (a "legal " company) is sharing a bank account with other exchanger, it's a "mystery"   ::)


http://www.trustnodes.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/bitfinex-bank-account.jpg




http://www.trustnodes.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/cex-bank-account.jpg

Because they use the same bank...

It is not necessarily the circuit breaker in itself being triggered that is the issue, it is the risk of the circuit breaker being triggered.

It is still fairly common for there to be daily 20%+ swings. You could also argue that the institutional money will make the price more stable, however "buy bitcoin" is a very crowded trade currently, so the additional institutional money may simply result in more people buying up bitcoin (being on only one side of the trade).

There also still remains the issue of 24 hour trading (and potentially news) on the spot market. The price tends to move at all hours of the day, even if it is not a 20% swing, it will often be several percentage points.   

It's the SAME BANK ACCOUNT NAME (same company) not only the same bank !  :D  

Cex.io and Bitfinex are using the same bank account .

You must not be very good at reading. Either that or you are being intentionally dishonest....probably both

That is mayax summed up.


https://i.snag.gy/fr8JBU.jpg

https://i.snag.gy/T2Iz0R.jpg

Clearly two different bank accounts.

I severely disagree with this point

In fact, the price growth which is inevitable with more money being poured into the system will cause even higher price fluctuations (in relative terms) because the monetary supply (i.e. the number of coins mined to date) remains the same while the market supply should necessarily run dry at higher prices on average. Otherwise the prices just wouldn't rise. As a consequence, the whole market becomes thin, and therefore it turns out to be more susceptible to whales and those who become whales at these prices when they start dumping their stashes

I don't understand the logic here. The bids are made up of USD so why would a diminishing Bitcoin supply make the order book thin on the downside?

But how can it be otherwise?

You seem to have missed the whole part of my post about the price rise. When the price rises and there is only a limited supply of whatever gets traded (which is the case with Bitcoin), there is no way there can be enough bids just below the balance, which seems to be your point. If there were, the price would just rise even higher due to competition between buyers. It is sort of an equation where you can't just diminish (or increase, for that matter) only one side of it without affecting the other

There are always two things being trading in any market. In this case, it is Bitcoin and the USD. The offers are Bitcoins and the bids are USDs. The offers will indeed likely thin out at higher prices but the only reason the bids will thin out is if buyers no longer want to pay the price. There will be no limited supply of USD.


That's exactly what will happen as long a demand is higher than supply. USD will be in abundance and Bitcoins will be in short supply.

You still don't get it

With run-away prices, you will always have shortage at both sides, though it is caused by the actual shortage only at one side (remember, it is a balance, an equation of sorts). No matter how high the supply of dollars is, the price will always rise enough to make them scarce at that price and on a way to that price. It is not just a matter of price fall (which seems be the root of your confusion), it is rather a matter of rise first and fall then. That's likely the reason why Tether continues to create their tokens out of thin air. But, as I said, it makes the market susceptible to extreme volatility. Just mark my words, we will see the price crash 50% or more in the future

Well, at least now I understand your argument, although I don't agree with it.


That really doesn't make any sense unless you mean that at high prices willing buyers will be scarce. But that's just price discovery and it doesn't make a crash more likely.


Now if the Tethers really didn't have the backing and all of a sudden all those USD vanished that would be another matter entirely. I don't believe for one moment for that to be the case, certainly not on the quality of the arguments put forward by the agitators. That brings us back to the start, CBoE and CME will bring in money that isn't in any way under question and will make the market more stable.


BTW, one of the first things about trading I was taught by an NYMEX pit trader was if you miss the move always get in at halfway back if it lets you.

Okay, let's look at another example

We basically have a sellers market with Bitcoin transactions, i.e. buyers (Bitcoin users in this case) are competing between themselves for the early inclusion of their transaction in the next block. In this way, they are constantly bidding the fee up, right? But does it mean that every transaction with the fee above average gets included if there is a jam (which loosely matches the shortage of bitcoins)? Nope. You have to bid significantly higher to get your transaction included soon. This leaves a very long tail of a relatively small number of transactions with very high fees, and it is the same with prices and orderbook bids. Anyway, if you look at recent Bitcoin corrections, you will see that I'm in fact right, and with rising prices volatility rises even faster, in relative terms as well


Let's just say that I eagerly hope you're right

@deisik we could probably carry on this discussion all day and never come to agreement. I would argue that correlation doesn't equal causation. World stock markets are at ATHs and volatility has decreased. It doesn't really matter because anything could happen with Bitcoin. We're in an exciting period of the unknown. My best guess is there will be some violent pullbacks that will offer great entry points to the brave, but this bull has plenty of life left in it.

According to Marx, practice is the criterion of truth

Regarding stock markets, here you miss another thing which I specifically mentioned. Stocks are bought with dollars or whatever, and there is never shortage of fiat currencies. Now imagine there is only one stock in the market, which is what Bitcoin is. With Bitcoin we have only 21M coins (well, somewhat less than that but you get the point). As I said, it is the limited supply of bitcoins which makes Bitcoin market very peculiar and different from other markets. That's the whole idea behind my point. Altcoins simply don't cut it since when Bitcoin surges like these days, altcoins go down. So they can be safely discarded. In other words, it is a monodrama, sort of

well, you are either a shill or part of the Bitfinex staff otherwise it's hard to understand why you try to defend a criminal company.

The bank account name is the same. The bank account numbers are different because one is for USD and the other for EURO   :)

I guess you have  bank accounts and you know very well that, the account numbers are different if you have many currencies  but the account name will be the same.

Cex.io and Bitfinex are using the same bank accounts (EUR and USD) .

I prefer my Marx quotes from Groucho.




There we go. We have a different view on markets as I recall from our earlier discussion.

No, they are both outsourcing to the same payment processing company.

Or is this freelance developer part of this great imaginary scam of yours as well?

http://montinglin.com/
http://montinglin.com/wire/

https://i.snag.gy/6SPutb.jpg

https://i.snag.gy/FjrWvX.jpg

I don't like much Marx either

But I have to agree with him on that matter (about practice being the ultimate judge). I see that you are hell-bent on trying to catch me with your stocks vs Bitcoin analogy, but, first, Bitcoin is the king while there are no kings among stocks. And, second, strictly speaking, there is no infinite supply of dollars to the Bitcoin market by any means as opposed to stock markets. This is what Tether likely tries to do, i.e. convert Bitcoin market into a sort of stock market but they will likely fail because they miss the king part. Anyway, we can only wait and see how it plays out eventually

I'm really not trying to catch you out but the analogy very much makes my argument.


There's a handful of kings. It makes no material difference.


There is no shortage.


I don't see Tether performs any function beyond the easy transmission of dollar-pegged value without using a bank.

Which are these?

But it doesn't actually matter since the stock kings which you are likely to name have never made like 1000% profits within a single year (I mean after they have become the kings, obviously), so your whole point is not viable anyway. I refer to your comparison of stock markets to Bitcoin. Regarding your other points, especially the Tether part, this may well be only our wishful thinking (I'm on your side in this question, just in case). Also, I don't see easy ways to get fiat into the system, so there can be a shortage after all. Which is why Tether, by the way

This is a very different argument, you are basically just saying it has gone up too fast. I would argue that the comparison with stocks here overlooks Metcalfe's law.

Fun chart - Comparison of current increase in BTC value compared to 2013 and 2014 bubbles:

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user235761/imageroot/2017/11/22/bitmet1_0.png

Source article (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-28/bitcoins-valuation-using-metcalfes-law)

I just spent ages searching for another chart comparing BTCUSD to previous stock market bubbles using price to Metcalfe value ratio but I cannot find it now. It also shows this is in early phase even before you consider the heard are only just starting to arrive.

Fun fact: There are estimated to be less than 5 million people in the world with a crypto wallet at the moment out of a world population of over 7 billion. This thing has miles to run.


Tether is a very small part of the story and the vast majority of fiat comes via other channels.

This is not so much an argument

As a counterargument to your claim that Bitcoin is like any other regular stock market out there, which I can't agree with. Well, to be honest, I never thought of that, i.e. about Bitcoin price rising too fast, but why not? After all, I'm speaking about the rise and the fall, not so much about just the fall alone taken separately from the preceding rise. This is what volatility is all about, right? And if it makes my point clearer, then you're welcome. Really, if the price rises too fast, we could very well expect it to fall as fast, as simple as it gets

It doesn’t, I’m just trying to get to the underlying reasoning to your argument.

You started off by arguing:

The first bolded part I think is wrong. The phrase “higher price fluctuations“ I understand to mean volatility, I’ll get on to that in a bit. I started off by pointing that the reasoning you gave in the second bolded part is wrong. The word trade by its very definition involves to items being traded. Price rising doesn’t make them any scarcer. If limited Bitcoin supply is a factor it in no way limits the supply of dollars to buy them. So that is only a supply and demand driver for the price to further increase.
The use of the stock market analogy was only to make this point, we could equally use any type of market.


So, take Gold instead, it is king amongst metals. Does it scarcity become more at higher prices? Is it more volatile? Is it more likely to crash?
At higher prices it is possible that people may be more inclined to hoard it thus making gold that is available to buy scarcer and further driving the price higher. This makes a new price discovery at the higher price as new buyers become reluctant to pay ever increasing prices. The price settles down at the new value and volatility decreases. There is no link between high prices and volatility.

What is volatility and what causes it?

Volatility is a statistical measure of dispersion, the size of the range of values, so refers to size of the change of the value. So, the question boils down to what makes the value change. The value is the derived from the sum of what all market participants think it is. That is driven mainly by fundamentals and human emotions. Bitcoin is a young and uncertain market and is therefore going to be susceptible to much larger swings in value as new information is discovered and interpreted frequently. There is no correlation between higher prices and higher volatility.

I disagree with that

Price rising makes things more scarce at that price level specifically. Well, actually it may not work with things which have an unlimited supply, but it is certainly the case with things which are scarce on their own (like Bitcoin with its 21M supply of coins). Otherwise, there wouldn't a price rise in the first place. In general, your claim is in direct contradiction to basic market laws. In layman terms, if something goes up in price, it pretty much means either supply runs dry or demand is expanding, or both. Any of these means more scarcity. In a nutshell, no price rise without an increase in scarcity


We are getting straight into gory details

Which make these examples not very useful overall. In case of gold, more specifically, it is not actually gold value which is rising, it is the dollar value going down like it happened in 2009-2011 during the rounds of the so-called quantitative easing. Basically, gold value remains more or less the same over decades. In fact, it even goes down somewhat. Apart from that, we don't know whether it is people hoarding gold or some governments (like those of Russia and China). In other words, leave gold alone


O'really? I remember you were saying different things (something like correlation doesn't mean causation). Just take a look at the charts and you will see that the charts confirm my view. Whether it is a causal effect of higher prices is debatable, of course, but the correlation is certainly there

That's probably because you focus on the less important parts of the case I'm putting forward.


I didn't say at that price level. I said, "Price rising doesn’t make them any scarcer". From most of this reply I think you have misunderstood that phrase so let me try again. Something being scarce can be the cause of it increasing in price but something increasing in price cannot cause it to become scarce.


No, again because that is not what I claimed. What I said was price may well rise because of scarcity but a high price does not cause scarcity.


It means demand is exceeding supply and nothing more can be inferred.


In a nutshell, you haven't understood that I am disagreeing with your original statement:


Price growth doesn't cause greater fluctuations.




They can be very useful to make a simple point but become completely worthless if you then waste time arguing the intricacies of every difference.


Yes, correlation doesn't mean causation is not the same as correlation can't mean causation.

If you take a look at some charts you will be able to find many examples of where something has traded in a price range for a long period then a period of volatility has occurred and then it has settled down into a new price range much higher than the previous one and volatility has subsided again. Again I am disagreeing with your assertions that something must be more volatile at higher prices. This simply isn't the case. I did waste my time explaining to you what does cause volatility but you, of course, focused on disagreeing with everything else I said and completely missing the point.

Then what's your point?

I don't see any connection to my claim. As I see it, it is pretty meaningless. Well, not so much meaningless as irrelevant to the matter discussed. Technically, you are wrong even in that since you obviously think that something is scarce just because it has limited supply. This is a wrong approach to scarcity because, for example, 21M bitcoins taken on their own are neither scarce nor abundant. Scarcity refers to the amount of something related to the number of people using it. And guess what, higher prices mean more people using bitcoins and hence bitcoins become more scarce since otherwise no higher prices are possible. As simple as that


This is not about volatility and some charts in general, this is about volatility of Bitcoin and its charts specifically

This


and this




higher price fluctuations = volatility

Hence the connection to me saying it doesn't


That is true of the next bit.

You may think of it as just being a side note

In respect to volatility being "a statistical measure of dispersion" and blah, blah, blah, you obviously fail to see that I'm not talking about volatility in general. This is boring, and it is boring not because it is boring on its own but because I'm talking about what makes Bitcoin volatility so special and particular. You see, it's a difference that makes the difference, and I'm talking specifically about the underlying causes that create this difference. Anyway, you talk about big money but where is that money exactly? What makes you think that it still sits in the orderbooks? We've seen the price surge massively recently, so it would be legit and reasonable to say that all this new money was spent on buying bitcoins, but do you have any evidence that it is still in the market and not gone elsewhere?

I think of it more as getting sidetracked.


The blah blah blah is the whole crux of the debate.


This is the problem, you fail to see that you are.


This is why we disagree. Bitcoin isn't special in the way it is affected by volatility. It follows the same principles as I outlined. (the blah blah blah)


That is as relevant to Bitcoin as any other market. The limited supply makes it naturally deflationary but has absolutely no impact on volatility. This can easily be seen by looking at what happened 2015 & 2016 when there was very little change in value as there were few fundamental reasons. Supply dynamics were not different at all in that time.


I talk about it because that was the premise of your original argument, remember?


This next bit we can agree on.


That's because it is no fun trying to debate someone who doesn't engage in my argument, beyond trying to nitpick side issues.

That was just to demonstrate how wrong you are (conceptually)

Oh, wait, wasn't I supposed to be wasting your time? Regardless, volatility itself is only a consequence (the blah blah blah part), so there is no way it can be the crux of it (whatever that might be). In fact, it is pretty inconsequential and uninformative on its own if we are looking for the true causes of it. It is these causes that actually matter. That's why you mostly make noise when you talk about it. Well, do you agree that at higher prices there is less supply? If you do, this is not what we should expect according to the basic market laws, right? We should expect that at higher prices the supply of bitcoins should expand, but does it really?

@deisik

Debating usually involves responding to the other person's points.


If you can't do that I really don't see why I should carry on answering yours.

Being dismissive and rude of my perfectly valid points really doesn't win the argument. It just makes you look ignorant, arrogant, and unable to argue.

Perfect example

Are you kidding me or what?

It was you who first claimed that I was wasting your time, wasn't it? So what is it if not you being "ignorant, arrogant, and unable to argue" in the first place? To put it differently, what did you expect in return? I guess you should be more self-critical in this regard. Anyway, as I said, you make irrelevant points. You voice some trivialities about volatility, but this is as just irrelevant. How else should I call that but uninformative noise?


So do you confirm that with higher prices there should be a higher supply of bitcoins to the market?

Another example of ignorant arrogant and unable to answer.

It is relevant, as I have pointed out many times without response, as it was the basis of your opening argument that I am disagreeing with.

If you want to continue this debate you need respond to it.

Note that I ain't calling you any names

I don't say that you are wasting my time, I don't call you an ignorant, arrogant, and unable to argue look-alike, and whatever else you say in my regard or blame me with. Oh, sorry, I said you were flat-out wrong with your understanding of scarcity, but that's the way you are. And now you come and say that if I want to continue this debate I need to respond to your point. Nevertheless, which point exactly should I respond to? That volatility is whatever it is? What difference does it make if I'm primarily concerned with the causes of it and don't particularly care which definition of it you choose to use? Further, you make claims that there are dollars in the system but can you substantiate your claims apart from the fact that they were spent on bitcoins? How do you know that these dollars are still in the system? You don't know that and unless you provide evidence, your point is moot

this is about Bitfinex shit....

TheQuin and Quickseller are like their PR. They talk nonsenses with no common sense like any shill :)  


I am keep saying that Bitfinex is doesn't have any financial license and that they operate a criminal company and the TheQuin is responding that they don't need one.  ??? ::) ;D

All the licensed exchangers are idiots and TheQuin & Bitfinex are the smart ones...

It's not strange to see this thing on forums because I saw hordes of shills defending BTC-e in the same way,  so....

No, I said they don't need those licenses because they either don't have a physical presence in that jurisdiction or in the case of BVI don't need one because they are not trading equities, commodities or forex.

Of course, you already know that because you were unwilling to answer the questions I left you about AvaTrade.

Your knowledge about financial licenses are almost zero so I cannot debate with you anymore. It's alright if you are Bitfinex investor, shill or staff...

The facts remain : Bitfinex is a unlicensed company, their Tether is printing USDT out of thin air. They are a fraud and a scam.

All USD trading on Bitfinex is actually USDT. They used to offer real USD which is why they are listed on coinmarketcap as such, but they lost their bank. How is it possible to have such volumes without a bank account? :)

Bitfinex = Tether = criminal gang       Stay away of them !  8)

As I already explained to you but you seem incapable of understanding let me try again.

Bitfinex does not require a licence to trade cryptocurrencies in any country it does not have a physical presence. The US would be the only exception to this and that is why Bitfinex has stopped accepting customers located in the US.
In all the examples you came up with of other exchanges holding licences they are required to do so because they have offices located in those jurisdictions.

Under BVI law there is no requirement to hold a licence for a cryptocurrency exchange. In the example you gave of AvaTrade they are required to hold a licence because they trade equities, commodities and forex which is something Bitfinex does not do.


I have demonstrated this to be completely untrue.


We have been through this one as well and again there is no evidence to support this.


They have new banking arrangements and are currently accepting deposits and withdrawals in both USD and EUR.

@deisik
I guess this the wrong thread for this argument anyway but you argued that "with more money being poured into the system will cause even higher price fluctuations"
I disagreed with that. "higher price fluctuations" is higher volatility so I stated what actually does cause higher volatility and you ignored it until I ask you many times to actually engage with my point then you just arrogantly dismiss it as not worthy of debate without giving any counter-argument. It is pointless to continue.

There is a new, highly popular, thread on reddit where a guy has made some analysis about Tether using
the OMNI block explorer. If his discoveries are true - I unfortunately didn´t have the time
to dig into his claims deeper - things are looking pretty grim for Bitfinex.

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7ih0hd/guess_who_controls_over_half_a_billion_tethers/

Basically he found out that even the wallets with high Tether balances that allegedly belong
to the big altcoin exchanges Poloniex and Bittrex according to the official "Tether richlist" seem to be controlled by Bitfinex.

I concede that this is once again little actual proof and much conjecture and the author also states:

Let´s hope that this is just again a misunderstanding, but at first glance something definitely looks suspicious.

Besides, I´m pretty sure that they currently only allow Euro deposits and still don´t offer USD deposits
to retail clients.

They have re-enabled it on the withdrawals page, although I haven't actually tried it as I'm all in on BTC at the moment.

Bitfinex fails to perform promised audits. Instead, they have a shareholder tell everyone it’s all cool:

https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/bitfinex-fails-to-perform-promised-audits-instead-they-have-a-shareholder-tell-everyone-its-all-965ae7037b5d

For Mr shill TheQuin :

Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) has issued its first warning under the country’s revised payment services law – which recognizes bitcoin as a legal method of payment – to Macau-based Blockchain Laboratory, an unregistered firm reportedly pursuing investors in the country.

https://www.ccn.com/japanese-regulator-warns-unregistered-macau-based-crypto-operator/

Bitfinex is unlicensed in Japan as it's in any other country. Bitfinex accepts clients from Japan even they don't have any license for that.

Again, you talk non-senses...  ;)

The relevant bit:


Are Bitfinex doing that? If you actually read the story you would see it is about raising funds via an ICO not operating an exchange.

The next relevant bit:


Operating in means have a physical presence in, not having customers in. How many times do I have to explain that to you? Even if an exchange did have an office in Japan they would be OK because of the exception.

Tether prints $300,000,000 and Bitcoin jumps nearly $1000 in less than 30 minutes

https://imgur.com/SCxxxEj


"Institutional Investors" are going to send $300 million dollars to a company:    LOL

1. Not once completed an audit they promised.
2. Lied about association with Bitfinex.
3. Founded by a ponzi scammer.
4. CFO thought about committing fraud several times.
5. Under CFTC investigation.

Exactly, they wouldn't, so they must be sure that Tether is totally above board.

by generating funds from thin air just to pump BTC. this is called fraud, market manipulation, issuing securities and so on .... :)

Bitfinex are criminals.

It has been long established that many of the tether “prints” is bitfinex processing customer USDT withdrawals.

Bitmex also published a research report about a month ago concluding bitfinex likely has bank accounts in PR and that tether is iargely used for financial speculation.

"You gave Japan as an example of where Bitfinex is breaking the law. Where does Japanese law state that?"

TheQuin, another example that you know nothing about regulations :

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-crypto-currencies-japan/japan-to-warn-hong-kong-based-cryptocurrency-exchange-binance-source-idUSKBN1GY1BK?__twitter_impression=true

https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/03/22/binance-cryptocurrency-japan-operation/



Again, operating in Japan, unlike Bitfinex.

90-99% of all the Bitcoin is owned by 1% of all the users.
Bitcoin is an improvement to the monetary system only in efficiency. The main issue of the previous fiat currencies is more abundant in Bitcoin which is the concentration of the elites wealth making all other users slaves for the system.
Fair distribution and manipulation proof are the most important elements needed.
Also note the volatility as a way they increase their holdings through manipulation.
The entire crypto shere has been infiltrated not only bitcoin.

www.bitcoinb.io (http://www.bitcoinb.io)

Get involved and help expose the manipulation!

THESE FUCKING CUNTS HAVE MADE ME WAIT OVER 6 MONTHS SO FAR, JUST TO GET VERIFIED!!!!!
THEY IGNORE EMAILS!!! THEY SEND YOU AN EMAIL WHEN THEY FEEL LIKE IT!!! MOTHER FUCKING PIECES OF SHIT!!!!!
DON'T SPEND YOUR MONEY HERE!!!!!
YOU WILL REGRET IT!!!!!

there are many sheep who will not listen.