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briatx | 5 years ago

Maybe you do buy BTC on Exchange B.

Then you transfer to Exchange A and sell, and what do you get when you sell? Tether.

The point of Tether initially is regulatory arbitrage for Tether based exchanges. It gives them a fiat substitute without having regulatory baggage that trading in actual money would require.

Tether then turned into a lifeline for a Bitfinex bailout and now acts as a (almost assuredly illicit) liquidity provider to Tether based markets.

The only reason Tether is worth a dollar at this point is because the Tether denominated Exchanges say it is worth a dollar. They are really what backstop Tether now and are fully complicit.

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ChainOfFools|5 years ago

seems like a constant long term rise in BTC valuation is what keeps them backstopped in turn, then. well that and conveniently reliable outages in the middle of every major BTC sell-off.