4 ms·

And a very large chunk of BTC’s value has come from Tether buys.

• amackera 5y ago
  Source?
  • JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    “This paper investigates whether Tether, a digital currency pegged to the U.S. dollar, influenced Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency prices during the 2017 boom. Using algorithms to analyze blockchain data, we find that purchases with Tether are timed following market downturns and result in sizable increases in Bitcoin prices. The flow is attributable to one entity, clusters below round prices, induces asymmetric autocorrelations in Bitcoin, and suggests insufficient Tether reserves before month-ends. Rather than demand from cash investors, these patterns are most consistent with the supply-based hypothesis of unbacked digital money inflating cryptocurrency prices.” https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3195066 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3195066
    • amackera 5y ago
      Thanks!
• TuringNYC 5y ago
  Could you clarify why this should concern me as a BTC holder? As I understand, Tether buys come in two cohorts: 1. Retail/Institutional USD/other --> Tether --> BTC 2. {over-minted/under-reserved Tether} --> BTC I dont see 1 as a problem, as Tether is just a conduit for the actual transaction. I can see the issue in 2, but is that an issue any longer given the current scrutiny?
• yawaworht1978 5y ago
  How does that work? You mean wash trading? Or eli5 how tether could be abused to raise btc prices, and does it work the same way for eth?