Patrick, I thought you are better than making these "non-proved" claims. I can make claims about Bitstamp or Gdax too. Their order book has increased 10-15 times in value since bitcoin price was in the 1000-1200 range too.
Tether certainly has a connection to Finex but they are not its biggest client. Tether is being used by crypto-only exchanges mainly Bittrex and Poloniex to give people the possibility to trade coin/usd.
A possible explanation of Tether growth is simply that: Polo and Bittrex started using them. Is that shady and tries to avoid regulation by placing a crypto sign over a real dollar? Yes.
> If you don't believe Bitfinex's $600 million in liabilities are worth a copper shilling, the only option for getting your value out of Bitfinex is to swap your liability for Bitcoin, which drives up the price of Bitcoin at the margin.
Except that the price of bitcoin in finex has been lower than other exchanges in the last few weeks and only slightly higher now.
> I, J.L. van der Velde, hereby declare as follows:
> 1. I am the Chief Executive Officer for iFinex Inc. (“iFinex”), BFXNA Inc. (“BFXNA”), BFXWW Inc. (“BFXWW”), and Tether Limited (“Tether”). I have personal knowledge of the facts set forth below, and if called and sworn as a witness, I could and would testify competently thereto.
> 2. iFinex, through its subsidiaries BFXNA and BFXWW, owns and operates a leading global Virtual Currency platform called Bitfinex.
I don't know what else you need for a smoking gun. Tether and Bitfinex are the same thing.
> Tether certainly has a connection to Finex but they are not its biggest client.
This is false. In fact, every "USD" market on Bitfinex is actually a Tether market. It doesn't matter what the label on the ticker is, because USD cannot be deposited or withdrawn from Bitfinex, only Tether. Given that, Bitfinex is by far the biggest Tether market.
Bitfinex is conflating Tether (USD₮) and USD: “Bitfinex lets you receive USD₮ from a Bitcoin blockchain address and treat them as a USD deposit. Similarly, you can withdraw funds to a Bitcoin blockchain address as USD₮.” [1]
Whether they are holding a lot of USD₮ or not, I don't know. But since they cannot receive USD, by construction their USD holdings are limited.
Bitfinex's Tether "holdings" are unverifiable and irrelevant anyway. What matters is what you can deposit and withdraw from their markets. It's not USD, it's Tether, and that is verifiable by anyone with a Bitfinex account.
Tether certainly has a connection to Finex but they are not its biggest client. Tether is being used by crypto-only exchanges mainly Bittrex and Poloniex to give people the possibility to trade coin/usd.
A possible explanation of Tether growth is simply that: Polo and Bittrex started using them. Is that shady and tries to avoid regulation by placing a crypto sign over a real dollar? Yes.
> If you don't believe Bitfinex's $600 million in liabilities are worth a copper shilling, the only option for getting your value out of Bitfinex is to swap your liability for Bitcoin, which drives up the price of Bitcoin at the margin.
Except that the price of bitcoin in finex has been lower than other exchanges in the last few weeks and only slightly higher now.