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Switch to CoinMarketCap and check the Bitfinex page.
You'll see that the trading pair with the second highest volume on the stock exchange in the last 24 hours – almost $ 48 million at the time of writing – is USDT / USD: the stablecoin of the wire, which points to parity with the US dollar, and the dollar USA itself.
From this data point, you could be forgiven for concluding that Bitfinex customers exchange huge amounts of cables for dollars, and vice versa – more of them exchange ether, XRP and EOS combined for dollars.
But you would be wrong.
According to a Bitfinex spokesperson, the exchange does not offer a USD / USD trading pair, and none of these pairs are shown on the Bitfinex site. Customers can deposit and withdraw both dollars and bindings to Bitfinex, which means that you can transfer one for the other through the exchange, but this process is much slower and more complicated than the & # 39; inclusion of an exchange on the exchange.
If there is no USDT / USD trading on Bitfinex, then, why does the pair appear on CoinMarketCap – easily the most visited aggregator of cryptocurrency data, according to Amazon's Alexa rankings?
The question is more of an academic curiosity, given that Bitfinex shares common owners and managers with Tether Ltd., the entity that issues USDT, and that the stablecoin is subjected to a more thorough check since it lost parity with the dollar more than a week ago.
According to Carylyne Chan, CoinMarketCap's global marketing manager, the data comes from Bitfinex's public application program interface, which powers exchange data with external applications. Here is the Chan API link provided for the volume data point.
$ 48 million of what?
Chan clarified that CoinMarketCap is as confused as anyone on the meaning of the non-trading couple.
"With this endpoint, as with the others on the site, we try to represent all the pairs that the exchange offers in their API", he told CoinDesk, adding, "we are continuing to follow our contacts in Bitfinex to make them clarify exactly what this endpoint represents, as requested, but has not responded to multiple requests directed by members of our team. "
In particular, it is not clear what the "volume" data point represents for the seemingly non-existent trading pair.
The Bitfinex exchange page on CoinMarketCap, which shows the USDT / USD pair that customers can not actually exchange, starting at 17:00 UTC on Tuesday.
In a previous email, the head of Bitfinex marketing, Kasper Rasmussen, told CoinDesk: "We do not have a direct USD / USDT pair on Bitfinex, so I think it represents deposits / withdrawals of some sort".
He added that "USDT is only used as a transport layer on Bitfinex", which means that it can be withdrawn more quickly than the FIAT and deposited more simply on other exchanges. The pairs of dollars they sell on Bitfinex, he continued, refer to US dollars and not to the attacks.
Following the publication of this article, Rasmussen emailed CoinDesk to explain that the USDT / USD pair "tracks deposits and withdrawals in the following portfolio".
He added:
"CoinMarketCap showing a pair is not the same as making public the data that Bitfinex does not exist in. CoinMarketCap keeps track of our APIs and their visualization of this pair is not something we have control over, nor is it something we have insisted on."
Influence on the price of the USD?
Taking a step back, few exchanges offer direct exchanges between cables and US dollars.
Kraken is an example; Last week, after the imbalance of the USD on the dollar, the exchange was swamped with concerns over the access of the issuer to banking services. Bittrex, that I have not seen a similar inflow of cables, it also offers the trading pair.
Given the relative lack of options for direct tether-to-dollar trading, it is fair to ask if the Bitfinex data have a distortive effect on the composite price displayed on CoinMarketCap.
The exchange rate of USD / USD shown by the Bitfinex API was consistently at $ 1.00, even after the peg collapse. On Kraken, on the other hand, the price of Tether dropped briefly to $ 0.85. It has yet to fully recover, trading at $ 0.972 on the exchange late Tuesday and $ 0.985 in the aggregate calculation of CoinMarketCap.
However, Luke Wagman, chief evangelist of CoinMarketCap, said there was no "obvious effect" on the overall price of the cable.
"The price we're seeing is a weighted average based on volume," he explained, while the mysterious Bitfinex USD / USDT "contributes less than 2% to the average".
As for whether the site plans to adjust or remove the data point, Chan said that CoinMarketCap "will have a better idea of the exact steps to take" when the Bitfinex team responds to their requests.
TO UPDATE (20:05 UTC, 23 October 2018): this article has been updated to incorporate further Bitfinex comments.
Bitfinex image via Shutterstock
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