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While I would very much like to agree with you, I still haven't read a convincing debunking of the "tether is used to manipulate Bitcoin's price" argument. The
by ur-whale 6y ago
While I would very much like to agree with you, I still haven't read a convincing debunking of the "tether is used to manipulate Bitcoin's price" argument.
The facts, AFAIK are:
- Bitfinex (or rather some entity controlled by the same folks who own Bitfinex) can emit as much Tether (USDT) as they like.
- They claim to have, in a reserve bank account somewhere, one dollar for each USDT ever emitted (which - in itself - is problematic because of counterparty risk).
- They have never - so far - provided a proper third party audit of said reserve bank accounts.
- Even if they do *actually* have one USD stashed for each USDT in circulation, it's highly unlikely they're just letting it sit there, it's likely invested, therefore risk, therefore the equation 1USD==1USDT is iffy at best.
- emitted USDT can easily be used to buy BTC and pump the price up
I'd be very happy to be proven wrong on any of the points above.
- aeternum 6y agoI generally agree that they should allow a proper 3rd party audit and disclose their USD asset management strategy. The biggest counter-argument is just the orders of magnitude of the two. Tether's market cap is 20b whereas bitcoin's is 350b. While that's large enough to cause a temporary shock and can be used for short-term manipulation, it likely not enough to cause long-term damage.