The biggest story in crypto world right now is news that Bitfinex, at one point one of the largest exchanges in the world, used it’s Tether cryptocurrency to manipulate markets and defraud investors. Also, that the massive spike in the price of Bitcoin in 2010 was driven by one investor, not many.

This was initially brought up in an academic paper by two professors at Ohio State University. From a recent post in Technology Review:

Griffin and Shams studied Bitcoin and Tether transactions from March 1, 2017, to March 31, 2018. They found that Bitcoin purchases on Bitfinex increased whenever the price dropped by certain increments. According to Bloomberg, which saw a prepublication version of a paper set to be published in the Journal of Finance, the authors conclude: “This pattern is only present in periods following the printing of Tether, driven by a single large account holder, and not observed by other exchanges.”

Alex Danco also has an excellent summary and analysis on this massive news.