Nic Carter, a venture capitalist, rejected the conclusions of two experts about a possible Bitcoin price manipulation.
Castle Island partner Nic Carter has refuted claims by professors John Griffin and Amin Shams that Bitcoin’s recent price surge is due to market manipulation by crypto whales.
According to Griffin and Shams, the current rally in BTC is similar to the 2017 bull run, which they claim was caused by a single crypto whale, which manipulated the asset’s price.
A Case of BTC Price Manipulation?
In their 2018 article, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Finance, the two experts argued that Tether coin printing, as well as a conspiracy to support the price of Bitcoin if it falls below a certain level, have been common elements to all of the cryptoactive rallies.
The report authors found that the price of Bitcoin surged after hour-long trading intervals accompanied by major Tether strikes and BTC purchases. Thus, almost 60% of Bitcoin’s gains between March 2017 and March 2018 would have followed a similar pattern.
In almost every case, an unidentified crypto whale used the minted Tether to buy large amounts of Bitcoin on Bittrex and Poloniex, causing price reversals in less than 60 minutes.
In fact, the two professors argued that BTC’s relatively narrow trading range since FTX’s collapse on November 11, 2022, during which time it traded between $16,000 and $17,900 every day but one in 62, would ultimately be the work of skilled manipulators.
According to Griffin, “…[the] $16,000 bar… could serve as a “coordination mechanism” to allow crypto whales to artificially push the price up to the upper limit of around $17,000, before pocketing profits from numerous small selloffs that have no impact on the market. In other words, they can profit by limiting the price range of BTC.
However, Griffin admitted that there is no analysis to show that this is what happened between November 2022 and mid-January 2023.
“We do not have a concrete analysis this time. The truth can emerge in specific narratives in the case of cooperation [of the whales]”, he concluded.
Another Expert Strongly Addresses these Theories
Nic Carter, a venture capitalist, rejected the two experts’ conclusions about this possible price manipulation, calling the business professor “stupid,” adding that his claims about Tether were completely wrong.
“Griffin and Shams are really too stupid to understand why their analysis is so off the mark. His only skill is acquiring whiny PR from gullible journalists.”
That being said, Tether was fined with $41 million by the US Commodity and Futures Trading Commission, following allegations that the stablecoin issuer only backed its assets with fiat currency reserves for about a quarter of the period between 2016 and 2018. This would imply that some coins may have essentially been “free money”.
Tether has since reduced its commercial paper holdings to near zero, replacing them with higher-quality debt securities and more liquid assets.
In short, according to this view, sometimes Bitcoin rises simply because of the old adage of supply and demand.
By Audy Castaneda
