Research: Tether, and Bitfinex ‘Manipulation’ the Reason Behind 2017 Bitcoin Price Highs
The New York Times reported that Tether (USDT) has turned into the source of criticism again after another investigation carried out on Wednesday, June 13th blamed it for Bitcoin price control in 2017.
On June 13 a paper was released by John M. Griffin and Amin Shams of the University of Texas recommending that transaction patterns demonstrate Tether was “used to provide price support and manipulate cryptocurrency prices.”
The researchers claim that half of the Bitcoin price ascended in December 2017, when the cryptocurrency reached all time highs around $20,000, was expressly because of Tether and issuer Bitfinex.
The paper explains that “Using algorithms to analyze the blockchain data, we find that purchases with Tether are timed following market downturns and result in sizable increases in Bitcoin prices’’
“Less than 1% of hours with such heavy Tether transactions are associated with 50% of the meteoric rise in Bitcoin and 64% of other top cryptocurrencies.”
Tether has routinely fallen under doubt since the end of last year after repeat releases of coins onto the market had a prompt knock-on impact on Bitcoin prices.
This time, Griffin and Shams’ theory have also moved toward becoming fodder for the mainstream press, publications seizing on the information to exhibit the professedly hazy nature of Bitcoin markets.
As indicated by the New York Times, the research “likely to stoke a debate about how much of Bitcoin’s skyrocketing gain last year was caused by the covert actions of a few big players, rather than real demand from investors.”
In any case, some industry figures seemed to concur, fellow research firm Chainalysis guaranteeing the outcomes “seem credible.”
Tether passed both Monero and Dash to become the cryptocurrency with the twelfth-biggest market top this week.
