Bitfinex Is Publishing Data for a Tether Market That Doesn't Exist

From this data point, you could be forgiven for concluding that Bitfinex's customers trade huge quantities of tethers for dollars, and vice-versa - more than they trade ether, XRP and EOS combined for dollars.

According to a Bitfinex spokesperson, the exchange does not offer a USDT/USD trading pair, and no such pair is shown on Bitfinex's site.

If there's no USDT/USD trading on Bitfinex 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 than an academic curiosity, given that Bitfinex shares common owners and managers with Tether Ltd., the entity that issues USDT, and that the stablecoin is under increased scrutiny since losing its parity with the dollar more than a week ago.

According to Carylyne Chan, CoinMarketCap's global head of marketing, the data comes from Bitfinex's own public application program interface, which feeds exchange data to outside applications.

In an earlier email, Bitfinex's head of marketing, Kasper Rasmussen, told CoinDesk, "We do not have a direct USD/USDT pair on Bitfinex so I believe it represents deposits/withdrawals of some kind."

CoinDesk reached out to Bitfinex with follow-up questions after receiving an explanation of the data's source from CoinMarketCap, but did not receive a reply before press time.

Given the relative scarcity of options for direct tether-to-dollar trading, it is fair to ask if the data from Bitfinex would have a distorting effect on the composite price displayed on CoinMarketCap.

"The price we display is a volume-weighted average," he explained, whereas the mysterious Bitfinex USD/USDT market "Contributes less than 2% to the average."

As for whether the site plans to adjust or remove the data point, Chan said CoinMarketCap "Will have a better idea about the exact steps to be taken" when the Bitfinex team responds to its inquiries.