RE: The fear around the Tether situation is overblown, and here's why: - by @voiceofreason

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The fear around the Tether situation is overblown, and here's why: - by @voiceofreason

in tether •  7 years ago 

By the way, the primary holders of Tether are exchanges themselves. Did you know that? They use tether to arbitrage amongst themselves and help close price discrepancies on different exchanges.

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  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Yes, that is a major reason to be concerned. If exchanges are the main holders of USDT, then potentially the largest Bitcoin exchanges are all insolvent.

You are talking about a $2 billion dollar liability max, spread over all the exchanges, in a $500 billion dollar market. Plus, most of these exchanges did over $1 billion in revenue last year alone. Look at the numbers, even in the worst case scenario where every tether is backed by nothing there is no way "the largest bitcoin exchanges are all insolvent". It's simply not big enough.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

This is ignoring the multiplier effect, whereby most of their solvency is in illiquid assets the value of which is affected by the existence of Tether itself. The maximum liability is currently $2.3 billion, but how much assets will be available to cover that in a collapse is unknown.

The liability of the Tether USD's themselves is $2.3 billion but the potential losses to the whole Bitcoin ecosystem are vastly, vastly larger.

Again, another straw man argument. How do you know most of their solvency is in illiquid assets? It's uncertain where those earning are/went.

And again we are talking about one exchange in a $500 billion dollar market where there is a very good possibility at least some of those tethers are backed, if not most!

Apart from all that, if this is your true belief are you selling everything to get out of the way of a potentially market crippling event?

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Bitcoin is not a $500 billion market. The market cap of the whole space is $420 billion currently, but there is far less money in the space than that. $1 million moves the cap far more than $1 million, because of the low liquidity and high volatility that comes with a lack of actual commerce.

Again, another straw man argument. How do you know most of their solvency is in illiquid assets? It's uncertain where those earning are/went.

The vast majority of exchange assets are held in the crypto that they hold on behalf of their customers and the crypto they hold for liquidity. How many exchanges do you think are actually holding double reserves, where they hold both the crypto and an equivalent amount in fiat assets? In the song of the history of Bitcoin, exchanges going insolvent and everyone losing all their money is the repeating chorus.

Apart from all that, if this is your true belief are you selling everything to get out of the way of a potentially market crippling event?

Yes, I held a significant amount of EOS which I sold entirely due to the connection to Bitfinex and Tether.

Ok, good luck to you! I took the other side of your trade and bought more on the likely misplaced fear, uncertainty, and doubt.