Bitcoin is in the news again, and it appears that news is both positive and negative simultaneously.
Bitcoin: The Bad and the Good
The good news is that the currency is rebounding from yesterday’s drop. After trading at $13,600 for much of Wednesday, everybody’s favorite form of cryptocurrency sank deep into the pit of $10,000 for virtually no reason. During the early morning hours of June 27, bitcoin was trading at approximately $10,400, having lost approximately $3,000 from its price within just a few hours.
Some attributed the fall to the recent hack on Bitrue in Singapore. A popular cryptocurrency exchange, it appeared that hackers ultimately gained control of the company’s reserves and stole more than $4 million in assorted Ripple and Cardano funds. While none of the company’s bitcoin stashes were stolen, the hack may have had an impact on the granddaddy of crypto nonetheless.
At press time, however, the currency is up to approximately $11,800, having added more than $1,400 to its price since yesterday’s early afternoon hours. While there’s still nearly $2,000 to add back on if it wants to be back to where it was 48 hours ago, it’s living proof that bitcoin’s stamina is more market-fueled this time around. That the coin’s maturity has grown, and it’s going to take a little more than the hack of a foreign exchange to potentially bring down the mother of cryptocurrency.
For that, many enthusiasts are feeling hopeful. Unfortunately, it has been suggested that the stable currency tether is at it again when it comes to pushing bitcoin’s current price. This was something many traders thought they were done with, but some analysts claim otherwise.
Tether’s alleged ties to bitcoin were first introduced last year in a report issued by Texas-based finance professor John Griffin, who authored a document suggesting that tether owners were manipulating the cryptocurrency’s price and potentially driving it up through superficial means. The idea expressed in the report was that tether owners were continuing to purchase tether coins which they would then use to purchase bitcoin, driving up its price and tying it to USD, which is the fiat currency that purportedly supports the tether currency.
Weren’t We Done With All This?
This is grade-A manipulation, and the news comes by way of long-time crypto skeptic Nouriel Roubini, who expressed on Twitter:
When a study shows that 95pc of all Bitcoin transactions are fake, while you got 5,000+ pump/dump schemes and the mother of all fiat printing/manipulating machines behind Tether running (another billion of fake dollars soon created out of air), how can you believe any crypto b/s?
At the same time, other sources are suggesting that bitcoin’s current rise to fame is being influenced more by market trends than manipulation this time around, which means bitcoin has developed a little more of a backbone. Either way, it’s unclear who’s correct.