Tether Denies USDT Involvement For Bitcoin Price Manipulation During 2017 Bull Run
It’s been almost two years that Bitcoin hit its all-time high of $20,000 during December 2017 crypto market bull run. However, Tether’s issues about allegations of Bitcoin price manipulation doesn’t seem to end soon.
Last year, several reports pointed to Tether’s involvement of supplying additional USDT stablecoins to its sister exchange Bitfinex without actually backing them with fiat USD. The allegations suggest that Tether issued additional tokens to just pump the BTC price.
However, in response to the previous paper, the stablecoin operator (Tether) has denied its involvement in any such price manipulation. The paper alleged that a single whale manipulated the entire market.
In the response published on Thursday, November 7, Tether has denied the findings of the paper and even accused its authors Amin Shams and John M. Griffins of their unethical motivations.
The stablecoin operator wrote: “To obtain publication, Griffin and Shams have released a weakened yet equally flawed version of their prior article. The revised paper is a watered-down and embarrassing walk-back of its predecessor that still suffers from the same methodological defects, coupled with the clumsy assertion that one lone whale may be responsible for the rise of bitcoin in 2017”.
In the paper published recently by Griffin and Shams allege an unknown party’s involvement in the BTC price manipulation using Tether’s USDT token and its sister exchange Bitfinex.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, the authors said that there’s no denying that a single pity was involved in this activity. “If it’s not Bitfinex,” Griffin told the journal, “it’s somebody they do business with very frequently.”
Tether added that all the assumptions made by the authors are built on the “house of cards” adding that the authors have themselves admitted of not having any concrete evidence or accurate data which can back their claims.
“The updated paper is still based on the same incomplete and cherry-picked data that made the original study deficient. Furthermore, the authors now admit that the patterns of trading they observed could be consistent with the market purchase of Tethers, as opposed to the issuance of unbacked Tethers. Importantly, the authors do not possess or reference any data disputing that Tether has sufficient reserves to back up Tether token issuances in circulation,” writes Tether.
Ultimately, in a concluding statement, Tether states that the company and its affiliates have never involved in any such crypto manipulation activities.