Bitcoin price being manipulated by small group of whales

wired_parrot writes: In 2017, John Griffin, a professor of finance at the University of Texas at Austin, noticed something peculiar. The amount of Tether tokens, which were supposed to be tied to the dollar, were getting printed in large batches tied to jumps in the price of Bitcoin. In a paper published in 2018, he laid out the case how a single whale was manipulating the price of bitcoin for profit, using Tether.

Although the unknown entities manipulating the price of Bitcoin have never been identified, dr. Griffin now sees evidence that the same malicious actors are now propping up bitcoin. Despite the crypto crash and myriad other negative forces, every time Bitcoin briefly breached the $16,000 floor, it bounced above that level and kept stubbornly trading between $16,000 and $17,000. Almost unbelievably, as the crypto market has continued to unravel into 2023, Bitcoin has gone in the opposite direction, trading up 35% since Jan. 7 to $23,000. The suspicion is that a small clubby group of crypto-investors are coordinating to establish a floor price for bitcoin.