Why the Tether / Bitfinex thing will be OK?

[d4n13]

Crosspost from reddit.

I've seen a large volume of articles talking about Bitfinex and Tether being a time bomb in the bitcoin market.  There are many posts so I won't rehash them.

My question is.. what is the Affirmative argument.  Points I have on the other side (bullish on bitcoin) are as follows:

• Bitfinex + Tether are < 30% of the volume... much less than MtGox
  
• Tethers daily volume is $590 Mil -vs- Bitcoin volume of $3803 Mil... So only 15% of bitcoin trades.
  
• Tether.io might be telling the truth and actually have $590 Mil in their reserves account in HK.
  
• Tether.io might be taking huge infusions of cash from other exchanges like Kraken.
  
• The spike in Tether releases in market dips could be institutional customers ($10 Mil +) grabbing Tether to buy the dip.
  

Again... I'm just trying to get the other side of the argument.

Disclaimer: I hold bitcoin.

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[Murloc]

I've always had some doubts about Tether and its usage but for now it seems pretty fine. It seems like they should have bigger reserves to 100% guarantee safety of the money in case of any big problems (but I'm not sure about that because the naked number of daily volume is not telling anything).

Disclaimer: I hold bitcoin.

Hodl is the right choice for all hard times 

[krigger]

Right now it looks like Bitfinex is doing some seriously shady stuff by selling off their own shares of tether, or creating new shares and selling them off and then distributing "them" to the users, who then in turn use them to buy Bitcoin, when in reality Bitfinex already sold them before, which means the price of Bitcoin is being artificially pumped and this is not good.

I would seriously be weary of keeping any Bitcoin on Bitfinex right now, or any altcoin for that matter - get it out asap because people are saying they will be the next Mt. Gox and that would be catastrophic to so many people.

[jekjekman]

Money makes the world go round.

People who uses Bitcoin for a long term now knew what happened in Mt. Gox before and Bitfinex is an another kind of exchange that is now linked up with Tether Bank, we all know that Bitcoin exchanges are centralized though so it means someone is taking in charge with it.

I read that both Bitfinex and Tether are banking and operating under the same jurisdiction that made them more shady plus they are showing an almost the same moves that people obviously sees and feels like for example of you can't withdraw USD from Bitfinex and at the same time with Tether.

[d4n13]

Hodl is the right choice for all hard times 

Saw the usage around, but didn't know it's orign meme.

Right now it looks like Bitfinex is doing some seriously shady stuff by selling off their own shares of tether, or creating new shares and selling them off and then distributing "them" to the users, who then in turn use them to buy Bitcoin, when in reality Bitfinex already sold them before, which means the price of Bitcoin is being artificially pumped and this is not good.

Was explaining it to my wife like this:

ME: Hun, remember when I was going on and on about "Quantitative easing", the Fed buying their own bonds.  Remember how I said it would be the downfall of the western economy and that we needed to sell our house, move to the woods and buy up bitcoin
HUN: Yeahhhh......
ME: Well now some moron is doing the same thing to Bitcoin

I have a patient wife 

I would seriously be weary of keeping any Bitcoin on Bitfinex right now, or any altcoin for that matter - get it out asap because people are saying they will be the next Mt. Gox and that would be catastrophic to so many people.

Yeah, I don't hold it in exchanges long.... It has saved my bacon more than once.  Moved my stuff off BTC-e the same day it landed.... thank goodness for that.

People who uses Bitcoin for a long term now knew what happened in Mt. Gox before and Bitfinex is an another kind of exchange that is now linked up with Tether Bank, we all know that Bitcoin exchanges are centralized though so it means someone is taking in charge with it.

I read that both Bitfinex and Tether are banking and operating under the same jurisdiction that made them more shady plus they are showing an almost the same moves that people obviously sees and feels like for example of you can't withdraw USD from Bitfinex and at the same time with Tether.

I'm hoping a 10 year hold will weather out any storm.  Be nice to have access to it in 5 years, but for now I'm telling everyone 10 years.  If we could hit 15k by 2028 I'd be floored.

[squatz1]

Well BitFinex did blow up about 2 years ago now when they were 'hacked' for hundreds of millions of dollars, and tether is just a walking scam just waiting to blow up.

BitFinex, who knows if that's going to have another issue again - it probably will as it's an exchange but still, I'll give it a chance.

Tether though, they've got a ton of people buying tether and there is ABSOLUTETLY ZERO CHANCE that they're really 'tethering' it or backing it up with real cash.

That's a scam waiting for the right time to cash out -- watch out folks.

[Enjorlas]

This could be the thing killing the Bitcoin

I already see the big headlines " The bitcoin value was artificially created by fake money ! "

[d4n13]

This could be the thing killing the Bitcoin

I already see the big headlines " The bitcoin value was artificially created by fake money ! "

Yeah... the cynic in me things that CME is rushing to the BTC option market to short, so they can call their friends at the FBI, FinCern and the SEC and say "sik 'em".  Sounds real tin-foil-hat, but 2009 made me this way.  The "independent" credit rating agencies rubber stamping mortgage-back-securities so Lehman Bros could shil them went beyond criminal.

Basically if it has a 10005 zip-code, I'm suspicious.

On the other side... I can't explain why the market would remain bull if this is all as shady as it looks.  I'm not the smartest guy in the room, and there are tons of people with more PhDs than me going long.

[martinbrock]

I dont know how it was back then with Mt.Gox, but I am also slowly taking off my funds from Bitfinex since they do not prove properly at Tether, that they reallly have almost 700 Mio. USD on their bank accounts.