3 ms·

> Who is doing this? Why would you sell for USDT instead USD? On many international exchanges, USDT are the easiest way to convert BTC to a (supposedly) USD-ba

> Who is doing this? Why would you sell for USDT instead USD? On many international exchanges, USDT are the easiest way to convert BTC to a (supposedly) USD-backed asset.

seppel 9y ago
> On many international exchanges, USDT are the easiest way to convert BTC to a (supposedly) USD-backed asset. I'm sorry, but I cannot follow. Let's say you want to sell a BTC, current worth about 10k. So you go to a shady exchange, click sell and 10k of USDT appear in your account. Good, but what is the next step? The next thing you will notice that there is nothing that you can buy for your USDT. You cannot buy a house, you cannot buy a car, you cannot even buy food. The only thing that you can buy for USDT is BTC (or some other cryptocurrency). This is the only thing you can do next. And the BTC is even worth more than the USDT, because there are actually people willing to sell you stuff for BTC. But let's assume for a moment that people are really hodling USDT. This would mean that there is an increasing amount of such people, because Tether is printing more and more and more of USDT. This means there needs to be an increasing demand of USDT, and I really cannot see where this is coming from.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- hvasishth 9y ago
  You sell BTC to USDT if you are not looking to cash out of BTC. Instead, if you think that BTC is at a peak in the short term and you simply want to sell at the peak and get back in once it drops, selling to USDT is just fine. That way you can buy back BTC once price drops. When you do want to cash out to real fiat, you have to sell to USD. USDT allows a large number of exchanges to allow you to sell BTC and hold in something that looks like USD. Without USDT a number of exchanges won't see anywhere near the volume they get. By enabling a larger volume, USDT is indirectly helping inflate BTC (and other currencies) price.
  - seppel 9y ago
    > Instead, if you think that BTC is at a peak in the short term and you simply want to sell at the peak and get back in once it drops, selling to USDT is just fine. That way you can buy back BTC once price drops. Yes, I get that. But as you mentioned this is "short term". How does it explain that Tether is printing more and more Tethers? Do you think more and more people are selling BTC for USDT for a "short term"? We are talking about billions here.
    - semi-extrinsic 9y ago
      > Do you think more and more people are selling BTC for USDT for a "short term" Could very well be. BTC is on a general downward trend, almost as low now as it was in November. If people think that seeing 18k again in the next couple of months is likely, then why not?
    - heliodor 9y ago
      If a lot of people are buying USDT with BTC, it means they don't have confidence in BTC going further up and want out in order to wait for the price drop, so that they can buy in later , assuming the price will drop as expected by them. If they had a way to short BTC/USD, they would simply do that instead.
    - antonvs 9y ago
      > How does it explain that Tether is printing more and more Tethers? The demand for Tethers is high because the demand to be able to trade is high. > Do you think more and more people are selling BTC for USDT for a "short term"? More and more people have been getting involved in trading as the price of Bitcoin and other cryptos was spiking. Now those people are in the market, but Bitcoin has been dropping. It makes sense that a lot of them would want to hold a USD proxy under these circumstances. Of course, that's the optimistic scenario. It's also possible that There's are being used fraudulently to pump BTC. Without proper transparency, it's impossible to be sure.
      - seppel 9y ago
        > It's also possible that There's are being used fraudulently to pump BTC. My point is: How can you pump BTC with USDT? You need somebody to buy your USDT if you want to sell USDT. In fact, you need somebody to buy an enormous amout of USDT if you want to pump BTC. Pumping BTC is not a one sided thing, and I fail to understand the other side. What I get from this thread is that that nobody really knows who is buying the 100 million USDT per week.
- ryanchoi 9y ago
  There's a reason to temporarily move from say BTC to USDT: If you think bitcoin/crypto currency is going to trend downwards for a bit and your exchanges don't have fiat balances (so the vast majority of them?) you sell your cryptos for USDT, wait for cryptocurrency prices to fall, then re-trade your USDT for more BITCOIN or whatever. Then you have accumulated more bitcoin (the premise is that you think it'll go up again). Edit: ninja'd.
  - seppel 9y ago
    > There's a reason to temporarily move from say BTC to USDT But what we are seeing does not look like a temporary move. All the printed USDT are "somewhere", and I want to understand where and why.
  - dingo_bat 9y ago
    But why can't you just move from BTC to actual USD in this case? And hold USD until you think BTC is cheap enough to buy again.

> Who is doing this? Why would you sell for USDT instead USD? On many international exchanges, USDT are the easiest way to convert BTC to a (supposedly) USD-backed asset.

seppel 9y ago

> On many international exchanges, USDT are the easiest way to convert BTC to a (supposedly) USD-backed asset. I'm sorry, but I cannot follow. Let's say you want to sell a BTC, current worth about 10k. So you go to a shady exchange, click sell and 10k of USDT appear in your account. Good, but what is the next step? The next thing you will notice that there is nothing that you can buy for your USDT. You cannot buy a house, you cannot buy a car, you cannot even buy food. The only thing that you can buy for USDT is BTC (or some other cryptocurrency). This is the only thing you can do next. And the BTC is even worth more than the USDT, because there are actually people willing to sell you stuff for BTC. But let's assume for a moment that people are really hodling USDT. This would mean that there is an increasing amount of such people, because Tether is printing more and more and more of USDT. This means there needs to be an increasing demand of USDT, and I really cannot see where this is coming from.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
hvasishth 9y ago
You sell BTC to USDT if you are not looking to cash out of BTC. Instead, if you think that BTC is at a peak in the short term and you simply want to sell at the peak and get back in once it drops, selling to USDT is just fine. That way you can buy back BTC once price drops. When you do want to cash out to real fiat, you have to sell to USD. USDT allows a large number of exchanges to allow you to sell BTC and hold in something that looks like USD. Without USDT a number of exchanges won't see anywhere near the volume they get. By enabling a larger volume, USDT is indirectly helping inflate BTC (and other currencies) price.
- seppel 9y ago
  > Instead, if you think that BTC is at a peak in the short term and you simply want to sell at the peak and get back in once it drops, selling to USDT is just fine. That way you can buy back BTC once price drops. Yes, I get that. But as you mentioned this is "short term". How does it explain that Tether is printing more and more Tethers? Do you think more and more people are selling BTC for USDT for a "short term"? We are talking about billions here.
  - semi-extrinsic 9y ago
    > Do you think more and more people are selling BTC for USDT for a "short term" Could very well be. BTC is on a general downward trend, almost as low now as it was in November. If people think that seeing 18k again in the next couple of months is likely, then why not?
  - heliodor 9y ago
    If a lot of people are buying USDT with BTC, it means they don't have confidence in BTC going further up and want out in order to wait for the price drop, so that they can buy in later , assuming the price will drop as expected by them. If they had a way to short BTC/USD, they would simply do that instead.
  - antonvs 9y ago
    > How does it explain that Tether is printing more and more Tethers? The demand for Tethers is high because the demand to be able to trade is high. > Do you think more and more people are selling BTC for USDT for a "short term"? More and more people have been getting involved in trading as the price of Bitcoin and other cryptos was spiking. Now those people are in the market, but Bitcoin has been dropping. It makes sense that a lot of them would want to hold a USD proxy under these circumstances. Of course, that's the optimistic scenario. It's also possible that There's are being used fraudulently to pump BTC. Without proper transparency, it's impossible to be sure.
    - seppel 9y ago
      > It's also possible that There's are being used fraudulently to pump BTC. My point is: How can you pump BTC with USDT? You need somebody to buy your USDT if you want to sell USDT. In fact, you need somebody to buy an enormous amout of USDT if you want to pump BTC. Pumping BTC is not a one sided thing, and I fail to understand the other side. What I get from this thread is that that nobody really knows who is buying the 100 million USDT per week.
ryanchoi 9y ago
There's a reason to temporarily move from say BTC to USDT: If you think bitcoin/crypto currency is going to trend downwards for a bit and your exchanges don't have fiat balances (so the vast majority of them?) you sell your cryptos for USDT, wait for cryptocurrency prices to fall, then re-trade your USDT for more BITCOIN or whatever. Then you have accumulated more bitcoin (the premise is that you think it'll go up again). Edit: ninja'd.
- seppel 9y ago
  > There's a reason to temporarily move from say BTC to USDT But what we are seeing does not look like a temporary move. All the printed USDT are "somewhere", and I want to understand where and why.
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  But why can't you just move from BTC to actual USD in this case? And hold USD until you think BTC is cheap enough to buy again.