John Griffin and Amin Shams, Finance Professors at the University of Texas and Ohio State University, stated that the price of the Bitcoin between March 2017 and March 2018 was manipulated.

Just like several researchers, the due wanted to think back.  In their recent paper, they wrote, “This one large player or entity either exhibited clairvoyant market timing or exerted a huge price impact on Bitcoin that is not observed in aggregate flows from other smaller traders.”

They are not the first to comment about the whale manipulation.  Tether responded immediately and called the paper from Griffin and Shams as that is weakened and flawed.  Tether states that there are methodological flaws in the paper, and they stated that the professors had given a clumsy assertion.

Tether also stated that the conclusions were based on incomplete data sets.  The authors openly admitting that they are not having accurate data about the timing of the flow of capital between cryptocurrency exchanges has been criticized for purportedly giving conclusions based on “cherry-picked” data.

The Griffin’s attempt has been called a “False Bravado.”  Tether states that their community and affiliates do not use Tether tokens to manipulate the cryptocurrency market.  The quadrupling of Tether token issuance is not due to manipulation instead due to the comprehensive scale utility of Tether in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

Anyone and everyone can influence the price of cryptocurrencies.  However, the scale at which the impact will be known to all is a different matter. With the Duo calling Tether as the only entity to have caused the manipulation without appropriate data, and Tether now refuses the claims.  Tether has been under scrutiny for quite some time.  And similar accusations are set to continue.

The USDT tokens are fully backed according to Tether.  This claim, however, is intriguing.  The details of the actual cash holdings have not been declared as of yet.

Tether has meanwhile declared their support for Peter McCormack in a lawsuit versus Craig Wright, self-proclaimed Bitcoin (BTC) creator.

Stuart Hoegner stated on November 08, 2019, “Wright has had myriad opportunities to prove that he is Satoshi and has not definitively done so.”

Ranking fifth in the cryptocurrency market, the market capitalization is currently at $4,114,863,720 USD. The 24 hour volume is recorded at $25,077,101,538 USD.  The circulating supply is at 4,108,044,456 USDT.  The total supply is at 4,207,771,504 USDT.

Tether was created to serve the purpose of being a stable dollar substitute known as “stable coins.”