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> Who determines how much your crypto is worth?

As with other things - the people who want or don't want to buy it.

What happens if the biggest player has an unlimited supply of money they can just mint at will and use it to drive up the price that you pay?

What happens if they also also get to see your order before it is executed and have every opportunity to insert their own in front of yours just to drive up the price that you pay (aka "front running")?

> What happens if the biggest player has an unlimited supply of money they can just mint at will and use it to drive up the price that you pay?

That's the situation we are in with fiat currency. That's what central banks do.

With one big difference --- centrals banks are motivated by overall economic benefit rather than private, personal gain.

Certainly that's what they want you to think.

And crypto wants you to think that unregulated exchanges are just as fair, honest and trustworthy as the highly regulated financial markets.

The question remains, who are you gonna trust?

> What happens if the biggest player has an unlimited supply of money they can just mint at will and use it to drive up the price that you pay?

That's what central banks do, and a lot of cryptocurrencies. It's very very hard to do though with Bitcoin.

That's what central banks do, and a lot of cryptocurrencies.

Yes, so crypto is just like fiat but without regulations or safe guards or insurance.

It's very very hard to do though with Bitcoin.

It's hard to manipulate the quantity of bitcoin --- not so hard to manipulate the price of bitcoin.

> Yes, so crypto is just like fiat but without regulations or safe guards or insurance.

That's why I'm not a fan of crypto in general, only of Bitcoin

> It's hard to manipulate the quantity of bitcoin --- not so hard to manipulate the price of bitcoin.

True, but I guess it's easy to do that with every small market. I'd imagine the bigger the market capitalization, number of participants the harder it would be to manipulate the price.

True, but I guess it's easy to do that with every small market.

It's pretty easy when you can mint Tethers and keep the price pegged at $1 USD no matter how many you print and use them to buy/inflate the price of bitcoin.

Again, not issue with Bitcoin but other crypto. If you can "make" money, you can buy anything.

If you can "make" money, you can buy anything.

Yes and anyone can easily make money just like Bitcoin --- just clone it.

As easy as making Facebook clone. Good luck with getting people to use it.

PT Barnum --- *"There's a sucker born every minute."*

How many Bitcoin clones and forks are being used in the crypto-market right now?

Too many to easily keep inventory in your head.

That's cool we agree on Bitcoin clones value. They don't matter.

Uniswap is algorithmic liquidity. It doesn't "follow" anybody. It is true that the exchanges have more volume, but that is not necessarily 'real' volume.

The operating model of a centralized exchange is that they get paid to both provide and consume liquidity, so much of the volume is their own. On Uniswap, there is no privileged entity, so everybody pays to consume liquidity. This is a huge damper on volumes.

Note that there are MEV forks that also massively increase the Uniswap volume too, but they have to pay at least the trade fee on both sides of a sandwich.

It doesn't "follow" anybody.

The uniswap "algorithm" has no other choice but to follow the "market". Otherwise, it would do no trades.

Binance's trading volume is 40-50 times that of uniswap. What Binance does affects the price on uniswap --- way more than the other way around.

If Binance mints USDT and uses it to buy lots of BTC, what happens to the price of BTC on uniswap? Once the price on uniswap and other exchanges starts going up, others see it and jump in to avoid getting left behind --- driving it even higher. What happens when Binance then sells BTC?

This is a classic "pump and dump". It happens all the time because there is nothing to stop it. Binance is the one controlling "the market". Uniswap with their "algorithm " just plays along.

Unless I misunderstand you, I think you need to look into the “automatic market maker” concept. Their paper is the best source to cut through the chatter: https://uniswap.org/whitepaper.pdf

I haven't looked at their paper but I think I understand the concept.

Algorithm or not, they are just a little fish that can't possibly do very much to alter the direction of a marketplace whale they don't control.

The only way for this concept to have any real overall significance is if they establish their own separate crypto and be the only "market maker" for it. But then this is "centralization" all over again.

Exchanges decentralize trust, you don’t have to work with any specific exchange.

LOL!

Sure, pick any exchange you want and I'll bet you a BTC that the price of USDT is effectively $1 USD.

USDT remains pegged at $1 USD regardless of how many new Tethers are minted. Have you ever thought about why or how this happens? Once you do, your *trust* in the crypto exchanges/marketplace will start to unravel.

Tether/Bitfinex has more than enough funds to back USDT, especially after the recent DOJ seizure.

Would I hold funds in USDT myself? No, I learned my lesson after losing 50k with Liberty Reserve.

Tether/Bitfinex has more than enough funds to back USDT

And you know this how? Trust?

Be honest. If the people running things used all the funds to buy a private island in the South Pacific, you wouldn't have any way to know.

I’m not sure what you are getting at. Who gives a shit about tether?

This is the attitude that makes fraud so easy.

This is like saying, who gives a shit if the NYSE is minting and selling stocks? Anyone with an IRA or a 401K should.

Who gives a shit if Liberty Reserve was a money laundering operation? Maybe you should have.

More than half of all crypto trades involve tether. The market prices of most crypto is being influenced by it whether you use it personally or not. If/when the price of Tether crumbles, most crypto will have no choice but to follow.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/francescoppola/2019/03/14/tethe...