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hubie writes:

The price of Bitcoin went on a tremendous bull run that peaked in late 2017. The New York Times is reporting that an academic paper suggests that the price of Bitcoin was being manipulated. They argue that the sudden gain in value in Bitcoin and other virtual currencies in the last year was caused by a small group of participants, particularly the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex.

Mr. Griffin looked at the flow of digital tokens going in and out of Bitfinex and identified several distinct patterns that suggest that someone or some people at the exchange successfully worked to push up prices when they sagged at other exchanges. To do that, the person or people used a secondary virtual currency, known as Tether, which was created and sold by the owners of Bitfinex, to buy up those other cryptocurrencies.

This paper follows another paper published in 2017 that tied the sudden and large increases in Bitcoin value seen in late 2013 to manipulation by the currency exchange M. Gox.

Original Submission