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A majority of the trading volume and, thus, the apparent market liquidity is in Tether. The problem with this is that Tether doesn't represent real liquidity si

A majority of the trading volume and, thus, the apparent market liquidity is in Tether. The problem with this is that Tether doesn't represent real liquidity since there's no way to redeem Tethers to actual USD. Tether currently represents a pool of USD that is trapped in the crypto market. This makes the crypto market seem much deeper and wider than it really is. The only Tether:USD market on Kraken doesn't have enough liquidity for a large entry/exit.

dragontamer 8y ago
> A majority of the trading volume and, thus, the apparent market liquidity is in Tether. Well, the majority of trading volume on some exchanges, at least. While coinbase-pro (formerly gdax) is relatively insulated, I can see that a lot of Southeast-Asian exchanges collapsing when the Tether bubble finally bursts... taking the BTC price down severely with it. But with that being said: do you have any hard numbers for the amount of trading volume that's tied to Tether? I've been looking for those numbers to satisfy my curiousity. I suspect you're right that a large portion of the BTC market is USDT trades instead of USD trades... but I never found exact numbers on this subject.
andrewla 8y ago
Note that I have not tried this, but apparently USD withdrawals from Bitfinex are working again. I would be interested in seeing information to the contrary; I can't find people saying that they can do it, but I also can't find (recent) accounts of difficulties, so I'm not sure how to interpret the data. If Bitfinex is allowing wire withdrawals in USD, then there is a mechanism for redemption of USDT into USD besides going through Kraken.
superkuh 8y ago
All these things only matter if you think of cryptocurrency as a get rich quick speculation scheme. If you care about actually using cryptocurrency and look at actual use then nothing is in the same league as bitcoin. Additionally, even if you're a speculator it's obvious that the price of alt-coins follows bitcoin.

dragontamer 8y ago

> A majority of the trading volume and, thus, the apparent market liquidity is in Tether. Well, the majority of trading volume on some exchanges, at least. While coinbase-pro (formerly gdax) is relatively insulated, I can see that a lot of Southeast-Asian exchanges collapsing when the Tether bubble finally bursts... taking the BTC price down severely with it. But with that being said: do you have any hard numbers for the amount of trading volume that's tied to Tether? I've been looking for those numbers to satisfy my curiousity. I suspect you're right that a large portion of the BTC market is USDT trades instead of USD trades... but I never found exact numbers on this subject.

andrewla 8y ago

Note that I have not tried this, but apparently USD withdrawals from Bitfinex are working again. I would be interested in seeing information to the contrary; I can't find people saying that they can do it, but I also can't find (recent) accounts of difficulties, so I'm not sure how to interpret the data. If Bitfinex is allowing wire withdrawals in USD, then there is a mechanism for redemption of USDT into USD besides going through Kraken.

superkuh 8y ago

All these things only matter if you think of cryptocurrency as a get rich quick speculation scheme. If you care about actually using cryptocurrency and look at actual use then nothing is in the same league as bitcoin. Additionally, even if you're a speculator it's obvious that the price of alt-coins follows bitcoin.