Users started noticing on Tuesday (23rd October) that on Bitfinex’s CoinMarketCap page, there was a “USDT/USD” market listed, but this pair was nowhere to be found on their website, the market shown had $45M of reported daily volume. A screenshot of Bitfinex’s CoinMarketCap page can be seen here:
Bitfinex's CoinMarketCap Page, as of 7:30 PM EST Tuesday 23 October
Considering Bitfinex’s and Tether’s recent issues with banking, traders were suspicious that Bitfinex was participating in wash trading. There’s no USDT/USD pair available, so why would this be on CoinMarketCap? Rumors swirled that Bitfinex was using this volume to restore USDT’s parity to the dollar. Since last week, Tether has traded below the dollar, and Bitfinex has had a large premium on its Bitcoin markets. At press time, Bitfinex’s BTC/USD market is trading at $170 higher than the Coinbase BTC/USD market.
Upon further review, Bitfinex explains that this published volume is from Tether deposits and withdrawals. Bitfinex’s head of marketing, Kasper Rasmussen, responded to CoinDesk and explained: “we do not have a direct USD/USDT pair on Bitfinex so I believe it represents deposits/withdrawals of some kind.”
He later clarified that this market “tracks deposits and withdrawals to the following wallet.” The reason why the market is on CoinMarketCap is because “CoinMarketCap track[s] our API’s and them displaying this pair is not something which we have control over, nor is it something we have pushed for.”
After this story created buzz in the community, Bitfinex responded publicly on Twitter:
https://t.co/sJ3VxufDli is the sum of USDt dep/wds to/from Bitfinex. We are not ‘publishing’ fake numbers; the API method is called ‘movement_volume’ and isn't part of our ticker API. Not pushed by us, pulled by CMC. Another not-so-brilliant example of anti Bitfinex/Tether FUD. https://t.co/elGnsVfCfA
— Bitfinex (@bitfinex) October 23, 2018
