The Big Short movie, BTC edition?

[bbc.reporter]

USDT was crticized in this forum because it does not have the 100% backing of real USD. According to Bitfinex, the tethers are backed 100% again. However, how are we certain?

Bitfinex also has pending inquiries on the New York State attorney general's office.



Whether or not USDT is fully-backed has long been a point of contention. The company has promised an audit of its stablecoin reserves (though it has not delivered one, and has since dissolved its relationship with its auditor), produced a third-party report saying it likely had more funds than outstanding tokens, and had a bank write a letter vouching for its holdings. (The latter two reports both acted as snapshots, only assuring the crypto community that on specific days, Tether’s obligations did not exceed its assets.)

Source https://www.coindesk.com/tether-says-its-stablecoin-is-fully-backed-again



Also, 70% of the total bitcoin trading in the cryptospace is made in USDT. This is an old source, however, I reckon the % might be close to similar at this moment.



In August, BTC trading into USDT represented 71.23% of total volume (traded into fiat or stablecoin).

Source https://www.cryptocompare.com/media/35651527/cryptocompare_exchange_review_2019_08.pdf



Are we sitting on a timebomb similar to the movie The Big Short?


Dr. Burry, The Big Short

[exstasie]

Tether FUD? What is this, 2017?

Until I see an FBI logo across Bitfinex and Tether's websites and a press release about billions of dollars seized from their bank accounts, I'm not concerned. I don't even care whether USDT is fully backed. The market doesn't care either as long as withdrawals are operational.

Someday I'm sure the music will stop but Bitfinex and Tether have been a "ticking timebomb" for several years already. Timing their downfall is impossible and to be frank, the US government looks powerless to stop them.

[cafetools]

All Tether does is instantly convert to Tether when you "sell" your BTC. They are suppossed to do it automatically and instantly. What is the problem? What else would they do, not convert it?

[bbc.reporter]

@exstasie. Is this really fud, however, and not a reasonable concern for the people in the cryptospace? Similar to The Big Short movie, everyone except for a few were very confident that the housing market would never collapse.

We know the ending of that movie.

[Juggy777]

USDT was crticized in this forum because it does not have the 100% backing of real USD. According to Bitfinex, the tethers are backed 100% again. However, how are we certain?

Bitfinex also has pending inquiries on the New York State attorney general's office.



Whether or not USDT is fully-backed has long been a point of contention. The company has promised an audit of its stablecoin reserves (though it has not delivered one, and has since dissolved its relationship with its auditor), produced a third-party report saying it likely had more funds than outstanding tokens, and had a bank write a letter vouching for its holdings. (The latter two reports both acted as snapshots, only assuring the crypto community that on specific days, Tether’s obligations did not exceed its assets.)

Source https://www.coindesk.com/tether-says-its-stablecoin-is-fully-backed-again



Also, 70% of the total bitcoin trading in the cryptospace is made in USDT. This is an old source, however, I reckon the % might be close to similar at this moment.



In August, BTC trading into USDT represented 71.23% of total volume (traded into fiat or stablecoin).

Source https://www.cryptocompare.com/media/35651527/cryptocompare_exchange_review_2019_08.pdf



Are we sitting on a timebomb similar to the movie The Big Short?


Dr. Burry, The Big Short

Tether FUD? What is this, 2017?

Until I see an FBI logo across Bitfinex and Tether's websites and a press release about billions of dollars seized from their bank accounts, I'm not concerned. I don't even care whether USDT is fully backed. The market doesn't care either as long as withdrawals are operational.

Someday I'm sure the music will stop but Bitfinex and Tether have been a "ticking timebomb" for several years already. Timing their downfall is impossible and to be frank, the US government looks powerless to stop them.

@bbc.reporter Tether has already admitted that their stable coins is not fully backed by dollars, and despite this revelation people have yet not stopped purchasing it which makes me wonder are they willingly allowing themselves to be scammed?.

@exstasie you’re absolutely correct as no one really knows when their scam will be officially busted, but till then we should act smart and avoid purchasing Tether.

Now Tether Limited seems to be admitting that at least some of those allegations are and/or were true. Tether used to claim it had bank accounts holding actual U.S. dollars equal to the number of Tether coins in circulation. Now, it says that it has . . . stuff . . . worth the equivalent of the $7.3 billion face value of Tether coins currently in circulation. But it doesn’t say exactly what that stuff is, and nobody but Tether Limited is determining that stuff’s value. Instead of continuing to promise a formal audit, the Tether site now simply states that “The value of our reserves is published daily.”

Source:

https://breakermag.com/tether-now-admits-its-not-fully-backed-by-dollars/

[pooya87]

Also, 70% of the total bitcoin trading in the cryptospace is made in USDT. This is an old source, however, I reckon the % might be close to similar at this moment.

@exstasie. Is this really fud,

considering that your percentage is a total nonsense and your title is also a bigger nonsense (Big Short is about the corruption of banks and how they have the economy in the palm of their hands, something that doesn't exist in bitcoin world), yes it is FUD.

Coinbase (100% fiat exchange) has ~35% of total volume
Bitstamp (100% fiat exchange) has ~22% of total volume
Bitfinex (both fiat and tether) has ~17% of total volume -> 89.5% ($22.04 mil) in fiat and 10.5%($2.61 mil) in tether
Kraken (both fiat and tether) has ~16.5% of total volume -> 99% ($60.05 mil) in fiat and 1% ($0.5 mil) in tether
gemini (100% fiat exchange) has ~4.5% of total volume
bit-x (100%(?) fiat exchange) has ~3.5% of total volume
the rest are too small to be counted (~2% among 10+ exchanges).

that means the total bitcoin trading in USDT is only 10.5%*17% + 1%*16.5% = 1.95% or merely 2%.
other tether volumes you see on sites such as coinmarketcap.com is the altcoin trading volume not bitcoin.

data is taken from https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/30d/USD?c=e&t=b and https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/markets

[adaseb]

snip

You are forgetting Binance which has I think the largest volume in BTC/USDT. And as far as I know Bitfinex pair BTC/USD is against USD and not Tether. This is only BTC, keep in mind all the hundreds of alts traded on Binance against Tether. I think for BTC/USDT on a busy day is like $500,000,000 daily. Hence there is massive volume.

All Tether does is instantly convert to Tether when you "sell" your BTC. They are suppossed to do it automatically and instantly. What is the problem? What else would they do, not convert it?

Not quite. It only converts to tether if you sell for USDT, so needs to be a BTC/USDT pair. If you sell on Coinbase, you get USD fiat. If you sell on Bitmex you get a type of Synthetic USD. Tether has been around for years and the FUD only started because one guy sold all his BTC too early in 2017 which started screaming "SCAM" on his Twitter. Forgot his nickname was something like Bitfin'ex or something similar.

[cafetools]

Can the OP or anyone else say for a FACT what is to worry about? Is the problem you think the owners of the Tether coin are spending the money on Lambos and stuff? Serious...

[The Cryptovator]

Can the OP or anyone else say for a FACT what is to worry about? Is the problem you think the owners of the Tether coin are spending the money on Lambos and stuff? Serious...

Worry about transparency of Tether Limited.  The problems is they are minting Tether whenever they want and they claimed that these are 100% backed by USD but there is no transparent data for that. If you notice bitcoin volatility then you will realize its happening when some big amount of tether moved from there treasury. Means most likely it's been using to manipulate bitcoin price as well. Tether Limited failed to provide transparent audit reports. You may read short details on wikipedia.

[pooya87]

snip

You are forgetting Binance which has I think the largest volume in BTC/USDT. And as far as I know Bitfinex pair BTC/USD is against USD and not Tether. This is only BTC, keep in mind all the hundreds of alts traded on Binance against Tether. I think for BTC/USDT on a busy day is like $500,000,000 daily. Hence there is massive volume.

Bitfinex has a bunch of fiat markets that include USD, EUR, GBP and JPY and they have the Tether market they also have some altcoins that are traded with different pairs. the volumes and percentages i reported is the sum of fiat markets (eg. BTC/USD) versus the tether volume (ie. BTC/USDT).
as for Binance the volume they report is partly fake and mostly belongs to their altcoin volume, when we talk about "bitcoin volume" we mean the volume where users trade bitcoin versus fiat or in this case versus tether not tether versus altcoins and altcoins versus tether.

[kapalmabur]

I heard today that some experts talk about the price of Bitcoin on telegrams,
and they say that the price of Bitcoin could go down today, so looking and watching is the right choice, before you buy  

[buwaytress]

Actually only watched the Big Short last month -- one of my lockdown movies -- and always remember why I wait years to watch a "hit". Got to say it wasn't such a bad movie at all.

But nah, why would we have a Bitcoin edition? A Tether edition sure, but its peg hasn't been its only point of contention, and if the dollar and all other fiat no longer need to be fully backed 1-to-1, why would Tether need to be?

I always thought it was the (lack of) transparency that was our problem with all coins with issuers.

[Slow death]

I heard today that some experts talk about the price of Bitcoin on telegrams,
and they say that the price of Bitcoin could go down today, so looking and watching is the right choice, before you buy  

it seems that many people are concerned about today's closing to see if the price will drop too much to $ 8000 or not. I read this here:

Bitcoin Price: Why Today’s Weekly Close Is Crucial to Avoid $8,000s

Today the price dropped to $ 8900. we'll see tomorrow we'll be at what price


I know there is a lot of controversy around Tether, but I’m still using Tether because I haven’t seen them closed yet. Obviously I use Tether only to do day trade on exchange

[BrewMaster]

I know there is a lot of controversy around Tether, but I’m still using Tether because I haven’t seen them closed yet. Obviously I use Tether only to do day trade on exchange

that's the reason why Tether has always had such a huge volume and why it keeps on printing more. everyone is lulled into feeling a false sense of security. the same feeling they had with many exchanges like MtGox with the logic that "they haven't gone down so everything must be fine". then some day you wake up to see the disaster.
in any case i think USDT is a disaster waiting to happen but its influence on bitcoin has always been greatly exaggerated.

[tokeweed]

Dunno about a 'Big Short' but I think it's gonna happen like the Nikkei...  We won't see new all time highs in a looong time.  Maybe more than half a decade.  IMHO.

Edit:  More than half a decade after the halvening.

[TheGreatPython]

Of course they are lying. Let's face it, if someone says that they are going to get audited and then stops working with the company that audits them, it shows clearly that they wanted the company to lie about the audit and tell it was 100% backed and when audit company declined to do something like that, they severed ties with them.

Look at the banks they work with, those banks telling us that they have enough money, even more than enough money in their bank means zero because they are not really a true bank that you can trust. Put all your money into a trusted american or European bank that we could see and that is when I will once again start to trust tether, until that moment they are just bunch of people who basically stole a lot of money in a very smart way that nobody suspected.

[exstasie]

But nah, why would we have a Bitcoin edition? A Tether edition sure, but its peg hasn't been its only point of contention, and if the dollar and all other fiat no longer need to be fully backed 1-to-1, why would Tether need to be?

It's BTC bears that push the Tether doomsday narrative. House of cards propped up by Tether, they say. The funny thing is that Tether FUD may actually be bullish for BTC. Consider March/April 2017 when they lost the ability to process bank withdawals. Bitfinex fiat and USDT holders panic bought crypto, the rest of the market followed, and it turned into a parabolic bubble.

Now if Tether goes down for good (brought down by the US government for example) it will provide a shock to the market. Bad news event. Having lived through many of them, I know what really matters is whether BTC is in a bull market or bear market. For examples, look at Mt Gox's collapse in the 2014 bear market, or BTC-e's collapse in the 2017 bull market. If Tether goes down during a bubble, it will probably be a deep shakeout that gets quickly retraced, maybe like the October 2013 collapse of Silk Road.

My friends and I have always joked about the "Tether printer." It's rather funny to see the recent Fed actions eliciting the same meme. Half-jokingly, it feels like they took one right out of Tether's playbook.

[Harlot]

Actually only watched the Big Short last month -- one of my lockdown movies -- and always remember why I wait years to watch a "hit". Got to say it wasn't such a bad movie at all.

But nah, why would we have a Bitcoin edition? A Tether edition sure, but its peg hasn't been its only point of contention, and if the dollar and all other fiat no longer need to be fully backed 1-to-1, why would Tether need to be?

I always thought it was the (lack of) transparency that was our problem with all coins with issuers.

I think OP's whole point is Bitcoin right now in trading is heavily paired with USDT so basically if USDT got screwed in terms of its price it will pbviously affect Bitcoin's price so as other cryptocurrencies being paired with it. The crash in USDT will just result to these Tether hodlers to jump out and exchange every USDT they have and accept all sell orders in the market, prices will go down as a result. So if this is a potential big short I think exchanges need to act out and consider slowly removing USDT pairs in their platform.

[Botnake]

This is not the same with what is in the movie the big short, bitcoin has been shorted many times and in fact we call this a very risky asset since it's so volatile, it could pump and dump anytime, and no economic tie with using USDT and BTC, so whatever happens with the economy, we can still stand just like what we are experiencing now, and if the exchange is proven not having the reason asset to back its USDT, then probably they will face the sanction.

Thing is, the big short has a lot involve, we've seen the bankers being so corrupt selling assets in an overprice value where in fact it has been sold many times and until that loan has ballooned and that problem explode, the only difference from crypto is that they have the government to bail them out.

in crypto, what we have? can we expect satoshi to bail us out?

[bbc.reporter]

Also, 70% of the total bitcoin trading in the cryptospace is made in USDT. This is an old source, however, I reckon the % might be close to similar at this moment.

@exstasie. Is this really fud,

considering that your percentage is a total nonsense and your title is also a bigger nonsense (Big Short is about the corruption of banks and how they have the economy in the palm of their hands, something that doesn't exist in bitcoin world), yes it is FUD.

Coinbase (100% fiat exchange) has ~35% of total volume
Bitstamp (100% fiat exchange) has ~22% of total volume
Bitfinex (both fiat and tether) has ~17% of total volume -> 89.5% ($22.04 mil) in fiat and 10.5%($2.61 mil) in tether
Kraken (both fiat and tether) has ~16.5% of total volume -> 99% ($60.05 mil) in fiat and 1% ($0.5 mil) in tether
gemini (100% fiat exchange) has ~4.5% of total volume
bit-x (100%(?) fiat exchange) has ~3.5% of total volume
the rest are too small to be counted (~2% among 10+ exchanges).

that means the total bitcoin trading in USDT is only 10.5%*17% + 1%*16.5% = 1.95% or merely 2%.
other tether volumes you see on sites such as coinmarketcap.com is the altcoin trading volume not bitcoin.

data is taken from https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/30d/USD?c=e&t=b and https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/markets

The list of bitcoinity.org is very incomplete hehehe. It does not cover all the trading volume of USDT and fiat for bitcoin.

Check listed pairs in coinmarketcap.com. I reckon this tells us that USDT volume is clearly more than 2% of the total volume.

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/markets

Also, check total volume of all cryptocoins. Tether has the highest trading volume, more than bitcoin, which implies that tether has become a dominating coin in the whole of cryptospace.

https://coinmarketcap.com/