The high price of Bitcoin was inflated artificially last year thanks to Tether and Bitfinex, according to a study

Currently the price of a bitcoin exceeds $ 6,000, but in December it exceeded 19,500. Soon after, in January, it was worth only $ 14,000. And a quarter later, on April 1, it was below 7,000. What is the explanation? According to a study, price manipulation.

A  securities manipulation campaign could have been responsible for at  least half the price increase of Bitcoin and other large crypts last  year. This is confirmed by a paper released this week by John Griffin, a  professor at the University of Texas known to have detected fraud in  financial markets, and Amin Shams, a graduate student.

"We discovered that purchases with Tether are made after market declines and result in considerable increases in Bitcoin prices"

That being the case, the high prices we saw in Bitcoin last year and  in other important digital currencies could have been inflated  artificially by a few key players and not so much by a real demand for  the virtual currency by investors or buyers.

Tether and Bitfinex, the keys of the supposed manipulation

Both  researchers examine in the article the relationship between Bitcoin and  the cryptocurrency Tether, a "stable currency" because supposedly its  value is always equal to that of the dollar and is linked to it,  identifying several patterns in the flow of tokens that came and went of Bitfinex.

Those patterns detected in the exchange, which along with Tether  received subpoenas from US regulators in January, suggest to Professor  Griffin that one or several people from the popular exchange house  worked successfully to raise prices when they fell at other exchange  houses.

The  key would be according to the research in that secondary currency,  created and sold by the owners of Bitfinex, which would have been used  to buy these other cryptocurrencies to manipulate. "Obviously, there were tremendous price increases last year, and this  document indicates that manipulation played an important role in these  price increases," Griffin said, quoted by The New York Times, which  reported on the study last Wednesday.
"This document indicates that manipulation played an important role in these price increases"

"We discovered that purchases with Tether are made after the market  crashes and result in considerable increases in Bitcoin prices," says  the introduction of the work.

Bitfinex  executives have denied in the past that their platform had nothing to  do with any manipulation and this Wednesday, after learning about the  work of Griffin and Shams, they have reiterated that they have never  participated in "any kind" of manipulation of the markets or the prices. In  a statement published by various media, Jan Ludovicus van der Velde,  executive director of Bitfinex, says that "Tether's emissions can not be  used to shore up the price of Bitcoin or any other currency / token in  Bitfinex."