> There is nothing illegal about looking like a scam. It is only illegal to be a scam. Unfortunately, investigators, client banks and other people you'd quite

> There is nothing illegal about looking like a scam. It is only illegal to be a scam. Unfortunately, investigators, client banks and other people you'd quite like to use for short term liquidity or long term profit opportunities don't tend to take "actually we're only trying to look like a scam" as a nice straightforward answer to their questions, so you get most of the problems of actually running a scam without the money even if authorities ultimately fail to find something they can put you in jail and confiscate your assets for (intentionally looking like a scam to manipulate your asset price would get you prosecuted in more regulated markets anyway). Is that worth it to earn a slightly larger and more downward-skewed spread on smaller volume? Certainly not if it's only matching cash equivalent yields you'd get without that (though I'll concede just because a strategy isn't worth the risk doesn't guarantee a crypto company won't try it). Obviously there's market making profit to be had, but as you acknowledge much of that exists due to short term liquidity fluctuations anyway. Short term liquidity is a motivation to exit some of your position at 0.997 instead of 1.000 as well as for others to pay over 1.000 to get their order filled instantly; the whole coin having looked like a scam for several years is a motivation to use USDC instead. And since there's no plausible separation from Bitfinex exchange, the appearance of dodginess also means missing out on larger volumes of transaction fees and market making opportunities on all other cryptocurrencies...