Researchers from the University of Texas said that more than twenty times the growth of bitcoin in 2017 was due to the activities of one large “whale” that traded on the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange.
University of Texas employees updated the results of a study first published in 2018. According to their findings, the growth of bitcoin from $ 900 to $ 20,000 was caused by the activity of one major player on the Bitfinex exchange, whose name is not named. This conclusion was made on the basis of the analysis of USDT and BTC transactions from March 1, 2017 to March 31, 2018.
“The data we received suggests that not a thousand cryptocurrency traders moved the price up, but one major player,” the authors of the publication said. “Time will pass and people will begin to wonder at the fact that investors transferred billions of dollars to those whom they did not know and who were practically not controlled.”
Last year, employees of the University of Texas in their article suggested that the growth of bitcoin was associated with manipulation by Tether. In their opinion, the company actually issued unsecured USDT tokens and then bought BTC on them, which led to an increase in quotations.
Bitfinex chief lawyer Stuart Hoegner considers the study inaccurate and “distorted at the fundamental level” because it uses insufficient data sampling.
“Researchers want to use the appearance of scientific work to enrich themselves. You can update the work as much as you like, but academic rigor will not appear in it at all, ”Hegner expressed his opinion.
Previously, researchers at the University of Texas said that Tether was used to stabilize bitcoin quotes in 2017 and to manipulate.
“I watched what was happening at that time and saw how millions of retail accounts were created during the huge boom in 2017,” said Mati Greenspan, senior analyst at eToro platform.
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