I am swapman, co-admin of Whalepool. We are a free and open crypto trading community that was started by full-time traders years ago.

Whalepool consists of 23,000 Telegram members, 800 Teamspeak voice traders, 30,000 Twitter followers, 16,000 YouTube subscribers. We are a community of crypto traders looking out for one another in a crazy scene.

We have always strived to create a transparent and honest community with a 24/7 Teamspeak virtual bitcoin trading pit. This is livestreamed on YouTube 24/7 too, for anyone to listen to. We regularly have had guests on our server: controversial figures like Roger Ver, Olivier Janssens; the CEOs of Deribit, BitMEX, and OKCoin; representatives from Kraken, Bitfinex, BitFury; altcoin devs like Charlie Lee, Fluffypony, the list goes on and on.

We push the recordings of these from the livestream to a separate clip saved on our YouTube Videos page here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSAXsgdvfiS9WqAxwjMm8aQ/videos

Our main interest has always been to keep businesses who serve bitcoin and cryptocurrency traders honest. In a scene where there are a hundred scammy pump and dump groups, paid groups which are shady, private whale groups that collude…our little community is just an effort for guys who have traded for many years sharing their experience and wisdom and bringing new guys into these markets. We have a passion for decentralisation through cryptography, original cypherpunk values. Many of us got into bitcoin because Wikileaks started accepting it, or because we heard about it on IRC. #Coinmarkets on freenode was the earliest iteration of the community which evolved into what we now call Whalepool.

All this I give you as background to make this statement: Bitfinex’ed is a flat out liar. In his recent article he said:

Whalepool has taken great effort to delete their copies of these recordings, and unfortunately for them, I already got them and re-shared them.

This is completely idiotic. We have never deleted any videos. The one event he refers to is because we had Bitfinex reps on Teamspeak and linked people to the Livestream. The Livestream was one URL link, but the clip we saved and pushed to YouTube created a different URL. Hence, the original URL goes “dead”, but the content is always open and free! Just listen to it here. And go to the DOZENS of videos we have on our YouTube that Bitfinex’ed stole and posted as if it was his own when it was not his own.

Bitfinex’ed refused to properly source these videos, so he had to remove his Twitter posts or get his account suspended. Because he refused to fully comply, his account was suspended. All the content you want to see is on our YouTube videos page.

The TQ: Tether Question

Since there is a whole article being made out of this response I figure I may as well make clear the situation about Tether.

The burden of proof is on people who are making claims. If you claim Tether is a fraud operating on fractional reserve, please form your argument and provide evidence. Tether has had third party auditors prepare memos demonstrating that there is backing of the tokens by bank deposits. There are multiple people who aren’t auditors who have seen the bank balances backing the USDT. A full official audit would clearly be optimal, but jumping to conclusions just because it is hard to get completed is hasty.

Personally, I think the only risk with Tether is that the US government could claim they are violating some law because they can’t KYC/AML every address that passes around Tether since it is on Omni on Bitcoin. But if you are a true libertarian or anarchist, how the fuck could you really be so outraged about such a harmless “violation”. This is not fraud, it is just fintech and innovation. The laws need to change to accommodate this, we don’t need “libertarians” crying to regulators to follow pointless rules.

If this ends with regulators going after Tether or Bitfinex, it will likely have full reserves of USDT by bank deposits, but they may get attacked over some stupid footnote in a financial regulation. Congratulations Mr. “AtlasRand”, taking down innovative businesses for such stupidity.

But right now, I urge you to pay attention to the market. As crypto markets have crashed this past week, Tether has maintained its price, trading at parity on Kraken’s USDT/USD pair:

Kraken is the only exchange that trades USDT/USD

Bitfinex, which provides 1:1 USDT to USD balance convertability on their exchange, has also not traded at a wild premium (this reflects perceived solvency risk in Tether since people with USD on Bitfinex just want out by buying and withdrawing crypto).

The market does not lie. Just like bcash fans can not deny that the market has rejected their “we are the real bitcoin” trype, the Tether truthers can not deny that the market is simply not pricing this hyped risk in that they are screaming about.

The big traders, the influential market participants, are well informed enough about how Tether and Bitfinex and the altcoin markets that rely on USDT all function. Tether is not perfect, but it provides a lifeline of fiat liquidity for altcoin markets. And ironically enough, since the Bloomberg subpoena FUD against Tether, the safest crypto asset to be in in terms of store of value has been USDT, since all crypto has just bled.

Muh Spoofy

The claims of spoofing and washtrading on Bitfinex also do not make sense. Anyone who is a trader knows that you can’t just magically wash trade prices in a direction. There are other traders with REAL orders that you have to burn through if you are going to meaningfully affect price. And Bitfinex, unlike the Chinese exchanges in 2014–2015, has positive net fees which make wash trading pointless. As for the spoofing, this idiot Bitfinex’ed just takes videos of markets moving and having bounces and selloffs. That is not spoofing, that is how markets move. Plain and simple, this guy is clueless.

Don’t get Bitfinexed’ed

Don’t be fooled by this charlatan “Bitfinex’ed”, he steals content, he spreads lies and defamation, and he has also taken money from his followers on false pretense by saying he needed money for a legal defense. The only problem is Bitfinex never sued him, so what did he do with the $50,000 people donated him? Luckily, the pressure we put on him forced him to come out and say he would donate to charity. Hopefully a third party auditor will affirm the integrity of this claim.

But seriously, OG crypto ppl know this guy is a douche who does not care about truth, just getting attention. Also he hangs out with the scum of crypto: /r/Buttcoin ‘ers, Emin, Bryce Weiner, Bcashers. He sold his bitcoin early 2017 and has been so angry about missing the rally that he has gone psycho:

Loser sold the bottom (Credit: BTCVIX)

So don’t get Bitfinexed’ed. Don’t let his sensationalist articles, out of context clips, and nonsense claims influence you:

If you had sold bitcoin when he was going on his FUD campaign since early 2017, you would have missed the whole rally (like him!)

If you got out of Tether when he has been crying the past 2 weeks, you would have been stuck in crypto which all dumped. USDT value has held!

Don’t make stupid trading decisions based on this guy’s lies.

Come Chat With Us

Bitfinex’ed hides on his Twitter and Medium. Meanwhile, here at Whalepool, we are out there on Teamspeak and Telegram always ready to discuss and debate and engage with rational people in discussion.

So come on and jump on our Teamspeak or Telegram and say hi.