Anybody mind explaining to me how tether works and how it's relevant to bitcoin price at all?
1. There is a blockchain that is unlike any other in that it has no protocol defining the coin supply automatically. It just gets added to manually on an arbitrary basis by a human being
2. The ability to do this is under the exclusive power of a private company registered in the Cayman Islands with a couple or more private shareholders
3. There is a notional idea that the amount of coin supply represents the amount of "real" $USD that is sent to the bank accounts of that company registerred in the Cayman Islands. But this is simply an unverifiable fairy tail as far as regular traders and observers are concerned
HOW IT AFFECTS BITCOIN
1. Many of the biggest exchanges in the world that quote "USD" prices for bitcoin are actually trading bitcoin against this "synthetic blockchain dollar" as opposed to real bank deposits
2. In particular, the largest exchange in the world (is it ?) - or one of them, Bitfinex
3. Bitfinex also happens to be owned/run by the same owners of the Cayman Islands company that produce the "fake" dollars, So this would effectively allow them to create any amount of liquidity for nothing on the USD side of the trade and buy of the bitcoin on their own or other exchanges, thereby creating hugely artificial market pumps/dumps. We do in fact see Bitfinex leading the price in a lot of pumps as we did today
4. There are some well researched articles showing that the Bitfinex/USD Tether operation has essentially been responsible for the ENTIRE price rise in bitcoin right from $180 to where we are today