Study: Bitcoin rally in 2017 provoked one whale on Bitfinex

One major investor had the ability to control the price of Bitcoin in 2017, and the rally was the resultmarket manipulation, says a new study by professors John Griffin and Amin Chance.

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Researchers analyzed all transactions inUSDT bitcoin and stablecoin from March 1, 2017 to March 31, 2018. They concluded that a major player on Bitfinex acquired the first cryptocurrency on drawdowns immediately after an additional issue of USDT. At the same time, scientists did not fix such a pattern at other sites.

&#171;It was either clairvoyance or operations that had an extremely large impact on the price of Bitcoin&#187;, &#8212; they summarized, but did not name that same whale.

Tether has already stated that the workfacts are not true. The lawyers of the company claim that the demand for USDT caused the growth of the entire market. In their view, the study was published to be used in $ 1.4 trillion class action litigation proceedings.

$ 1.4 trillion sued against Tether and Bitfinex

Graffin and Chance are not the first time to blame Tether andBitfinex in market manipulation. They published an almost similar study in the middle of last year, but then it was about the activity of many small players on the exchange after the issue of USDT.

&#171;We believe that we are talking about one majorplayer, not thousands of investors. In a few years, people will be surprised how investors handed over billions of dollars to people they didn't know and who were operating without proper supervision.

A strong correlation between the growth of bitcoin and the release of USDT in 2019 was also established in TokenAnalyst.

In 2017-2018, Bitfinex on average controlled up to 20% of the market, but then its share began to plummet. In October, it amounted to only 7.3%.

Recall that since April, the stock exchange has been dragged into the judicialthe trial against the New York Attorney General's Office in the case of concealing the loss of more than $ 850 million of client funds in the accounts of the CryptoCapital processing, whose founders are accused of money laundering.