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0 pointsur-whale5y ago0 comments

Yes, this has been discussed many times on HN, but I'd like to hear the specifics of the mechanism by which Tether actually influences the price of Bitcoin up and down.

According to [1] (2018) , actually getting down to the metal to track what happens in the tether blockchain isn't straightforward.

According to coincap [2] there is around 20B tether in circulation.

Also according to coincap, the Bitcoin market cap is around 380B.

Now, the question is one of market depth: can 20B be used to manipulate a 380B market.

What I would very much like to see is an aggregate market depth number for - say - the top 30 exchanges. Does anyone have a reference for this?

[1] https://hackernoon.com/a-closer-look-at-tethers-blockchain-5...

[2] https://coincap.io/

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3 comments · 2 top-level

meowster5y ago· 1 in thread

That's 20B of "money" supposedly going into the market. A market cap of 380B doesn't mean 380B went into the market. 20B of "money" could easily move such a market significantly.

If I have a billion coins, and I sell one for $1, it has a market cap of 1B, but only $1 went into the market.

ur-whaleOP5y ago

Yes, which is the reason for my question (last line of my post).

paulgb5y ago

> Now, the question is one of market depth: can 20B be used to manipulate a 380B market.

I think the answer to this is yes, but I’d suggest a further specification: could it be used to manipulate a 380B market without breaking the dollar peg, which I haven’t been able to figure out a good mechanism for.

That said, I do think there’s a reasonably probable case where USDT unraveling is an existential threat to BTC: if a large portion of USDT reserves are actually in BTC, a run on USDT could cause Tether to start needing to sell BTC holdings at market to hold the peg, which would drive the prices down.

AFAIK Tether has not said that it is backed by USD, just by “assets”, and hasn’t completed an audit.

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