Υπάρχει μια τρελή θεωρία ότι η ισοτιμία του Bitcoin χειραγωγείται και ο ακαδημαϊκός John Griffin που απέδειξε αυτή την χειραγώγηση το 2017 υποψιάζεται ότι μπορεί να συμβαίνει ξανά το 2023.
The 2017 the New York Times covered the investigation compiled by University of Texas economics professor John Griffin about Hong Kong-based Bitfinex, which is "one of the largest and least regulated exchanges in the industry."
Mr. Griffin looked at the flow of digital exchanges coming in and out of Bitfinex and found several different patterns that suggest someone or people at the exchange successfully worked to push prices up when they were falling on other exchanges.
To accomplish this, the person or persons used a secondary virtual currency known as Tether, which was created and sold by the owners of Bitfinex, to buy the other cryptocurrencies.
According to one new article in Fortune, to reach this conclusion, John Griffin and Amin Shams, then a PhD candidate at McCombs, sifted through 200 gigabytes of transaction data and tracked sales and purchases from 2,5 million separate wallets.
The researchers ultimately concluded that a single, as-yet-unknown, Bitcoin “whale” caused nearly 60% of Bitcoin's annual rise in 2017 from under $1.000 to over $19.000.
Note: Cryptocurrency whales are individuals or entities that own large amounts of a particular cryptocurrency. Broadly speaking, a crypto whale is an entity that owns enough digital currency to significantly affect market prices by trading significant amounts of currency.
But more importantly, as Fortune reports, Griffin "suspects a similar dynamic is at work today."
Towards the end of 2022, another mysterious trend caught Griffin's eye. Despite the crypto crash and myriad other negative forces, every time Bitcoin briefly broke the $16.000 floor, it bounced back above that level and continued to stubbornly trade between $16.000 and $17.000.
Almost unbelievably, as the crypto market continued to unravel until 2023, Bitcoin moved in the opposite direction, trading since January 7, up 35%, at $23.000.
"It's very suspicious," Griffin told Fortune. "The same mechanism we saw in 2017 could be at work today in the still unreal Bitcoin market."
For Griffin, the way the usually volatile Bitcoin has moved calmly and steadily through the most stormy times for crypto fits a scenario where some come together to support and counteract its price slide.
It is important to note that no definitive proof of this theory has yet emerged.
Griffin states that: “The Bitcoin space is now bigger, so it's harder to mine the data. Advanced players can be experts at hiding their identity. We've seen credible leaks where it appears that major market participants are calling meetings of industry elites when they fear a cryptocurrency leader is planning to make a reckless, industry-dangerous move against them.”
