BITCOIN

Zola.

Tether is very much BS, and its failure would be fantastic and cause the collapse of Bitfinex, Binance, and others. But this would be fantastic for Bitcoin. Bitcoin's price is not being propped up by Tether. Tether markets are not spot markets, cannot engage on spot markets. Tether gets "printed" when people exchange sh*tcoins for bitcoin. Or whenever Bitfinex wants to. No one should touch it and if you do, that's your blind risk-taking

Some sh*tcoin exchanges don't use fiat to avoid regulators - they use company giftcards we call "stablecoins" to exchange bitcoin for shi*tcoins indirectly, you use these company gift cards. Exchanges are also greedy and are desperate for trading volume - and sh*tcoins and their "defi" scams thrive around stablecoins

Tether is building on sand. If I was a Tether holder and they started to collapse I would sell into BTC. Regarding the broader market, there are others that perform the same function as Tether so it's hard to imagine that new money will struggle to get in. Hence the FUD

Zola.

Frequentlyhere said:

Zola. said:

Crypto Whale is a lying scammer. Jesus I'm gonna stop coming to this thread. So much nonsense and life is too short 😂

Who would they be gaining from?  In any case (maybe I'm wrong) isn't all of the information they supply a matter of public record?

Not only is crypto whale a troll, an idiot, and a scammer, he is also not a man of his word. He made large bets on bitcoin's price earlier in the year with someone and was proven to be incredibly wrong. He didn't pay his very public bet and instead ran away, deleted his account for a while, only to resurface later, he is an absolute moron. 

Malthusian

Zola. said:

Tether is very much BS, and its failure would be fantastic and cause the collapse of Bitfinex, Binance, and others. But this would be fantastic for Bitcoin. Bitcoin's price is not being propped up by Tether.

I am genuinely intrigued as to whether you are right. Your hypothesis relies on the idea that once Tether collapses, all the new money that is currently flowing into Defi nonsense would flow into Bitcoin instead.

The main problem with this hypotheisis is that the Defi house of cards exists because people were bored of hodling their Bitcoin indefinitely and waiting for number go up. This created the demand for what is essentially the London Capital and Finance scam with a new crypto coat of paint. A scheme that, unlike Bitcoin, promises a regular and defined return, that isn't totally unbelievable like the "1% a day" Bitconnect type scams. If they were ever going to pump this money into Bitcoin and its promise of jam someday maybe, you have to ask why they didn't just do that in the first place instead of trusting it to some dude with a magic money-printing machine.

The general public still perceives crypto as a giant amorphous blob, that's why so many threads from new posters asking about crypto are in reality asking about bog-standard Nigerian Prince scams with pictures of Dragons Den and Philip Schofield. The idea that headlines containing the words "billions lost in massive crypto fraud" will make the public want to put its money into Bitcoin is extremely optimistic. It's like saying that headlines about the collapse of a major blue chip share (an Enron or a Carillion) will make everyone rush to put their money in diversified stockmarket funds. To the average layperson it just proves that "the stockmarket is a casino" and any attempts to persuade them that it's night and day will fail because they have no reason to want to be corrected.

When/if Tether collapses I suspect that nothing much will happen except that in 2-3 years someone will come up with a new spin on the same old scam.

Quick straw poll: Is anyone in this thread willing to say, hand on heart, that they believe that Tether would be able to pay out one US dollar for every bro dollar if 100% of hodlers called upon its claim to be "100% backed"? Say, within one year? (Clearly it wouldn't be able to do so instantly, but I wouldn't see anything wrong with that, as that would put it on the same footing as a bank, providing it paid out 100% eventually.)

If the answer is "yes", why does Tether refuse to have its reserves audited? Actually audited with an independent valuation of their assets, not this "We confirm we read this report Tether gave us and one number was bigger than the other number" nonsense from some accountant nobody has ever heard of.

Zola.

https://twitter.com/saylor/status/1465305537210458115?t=bjJNJAKXcpOB5zgkcS-bsA&s=19

Yikes

Scottex99

"When/if Tether collapses I suspect that nothing much will happen except that in 2-3 years someone will come up with a new spin on the same old scam."

It would cause shockwaves imo. The daily volume on USDT is generally at least as big as the rest of the top 10 biggest coins added together. I'd guess there are more Tether pairs on CEXs than anything else, by a long way. Some exchanges that dont touch fiat will almost exclusively be using it as the USD equivalent, for a massive part of their overall volume. Although they are probably using USDC, DAI and a few others too.

To the straw poll, I'd say yep, they could do it if you gave them a year to settle, but I dont have an answer for the 2nd part. There will be elements of everything in why that is. Part shady, part secretive, part not willing to comply.

USDC is generally held in much higher regard and I think I'm correct in saying their recent figures didn't have too much fiat on account either. Why would you when it generates so little income?

The Tether FUD (albeit pretty legitimate) has been around for at least 4 years and people just keep on using it, more than any other digital asset, day after day, week after week.

I think we'll have a scandal at some point and it'll lose it's dollar peg, either gradually or overnight, but then arb ops appear to bring it back on track (assuming the consensus is not that it's going to 0).

On a side issue, you seem fairly clued up for a no-coiner, are you sure you dont have a little cheeky bag of coins somewhere? I seriously couldn't follow a market, even if I was convinced it was a Ponzi and not have a small allocation, to keep me sane. I did a 10x on DOGE and SHIB for that exact reason. If all these morons are making money on meme coins, I should be at the party for a few days at least.

Cheers

 

Zola.

@Malthusian definitely appears to have/had some bitcoin or at least interest in it (I noticed he/she didn't answer this before when I asked directly), seems to have at least partially gone down the rabbit hole, but has maybe sold or held on and is frustrated.

Malthusian

By "nothing much will happen" I mean there won't be a big influx of money into other cryptos. The disappeared money won't do anything, it will already be gone. It will certainly cause shockwaves but mostly in the closed circle of the crypto world, it'll be doing well if it makes the first page of the business news.

Everyone said "it's been around for years" the day before the bottom fell out of every single bubble in history. All it takes is for people to no longer be willing to hand over 1 real dollar for 1 Tether. As to when that might happen, nobody knows. It is random, same as wars, fashions and every other mass social movement.

The entire raison d'etre of Tether is that it has 1 real dollar in the bank for every digital dollar in circulation, which rapidly became "1 dollar's worth of a bunch of investments nobody's allowed to audit", but that reverse ferret only took place after people had already handed over loads of real dollars. At which point nobody wanted to test Tether's promise because they wanted to be able to get 1 real dollar back when they sold their digital dollars.

If it turns out that Tether only has enough money to hand over, say, 3 cents per Tether, nobody has any reason to hand over more than 3c for a Tether, other than the hope of selling it for more later. "Arbitrage" isn't going to magically make a crypto worth $1. Buying a failed stablecoin for 95c in the hope of selling it for $1, when there isn't already someone with an open buy order for $1, is speculation, not arbitrage.

I have never owned any cryptocurrency. I have a lifelong interest in zero sum money games that goes all the way back to my father telling me "you would be a great bookmaker if it wasn't for your asthma" (this was pre the smoking ban). Other milestones on that journey include the launch of the National Lottery, an economics degree and a semi-pro poker playing housemate who would be flashing his cash one week and living on baked beans the rest of the month. I find the combination of mathematics and random, often bizarre human behaviour inherently compelling.

cheapskate1983

Scottex99 said:

This is going to get interesting now but see other thread. 

Calls Tether a scam but openly holds XRP. 

Oh and $250k doesn't make you a whale, FYI

Nah thats my trade bag that I use on Bitrue. 

cheapskate1983

Zola. said:

Crypto Whale is a lying scammer. Jesus I'm gonna stop coming to this thread. So much nonsense and life is too short 😂

Zola. said:

Crypto Whale is a lying scammer. Jesus I'm gonna stop coming to this thread. So much nonsense and life is too short 😂

Got any proof? Like real proof. 

Scottex99

cheapskate1983 said:

Scottex99 said:

This is going to get interesting now but see other thread. 

Calls Tether a scam but openly holds XRP. 

Oh and $250k doesn't make you a whale, FYI

Nah thats my trade bag that I use on Bitrue. 

Don't see the point of using a 3rd Tier exchange myself but each to their own