Fascinating article about Bitcoin

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/t...oin-price.html


They were talking about this article this am on CNBC. Apparently, they claim, that a group of traders positioned in parts of Asia and some in the US, could/are, using tether to buy Bitcoin several percentage points lower on an Asian exchange and then selling it on GDAX/Coinbase making a profit on the price difference.

The possibility as discussed in the article, that tether is being created out of nothing should be alarming. It should be alarming of what this article may mean. They may be buying bitcoin with nothing and selling it to you for dollars.

Now I don't know the validity of the article, but it would explain the recent price action. A very controlled slow bleed in price.

There's a few places you can buy lower and sell at other exchanges for a higher price. The tether topic is pretty big right now. Nobody knows if it's backed by real US dollars or not. I don't quite understand why this is really bad for the market. At some point, fiat was used to purchase crypto. Whether you buy bitcoin, tether, ether, or whatever at some point a fiat was used to start that transaction. If tether goes away why would that be any different than another coin dying? The entire market is backed by fiat, I don't see how tether can change that.