This development comes shortly after Tether and Bitfinex lawyers asked the court to terminate the case because it was “a frivolous Lawsuit.” When filing the petition, the plaintiffs based their complaints on allegations contained in a report that had been prepared and published by Two American researchers Amin Shams, who is an assistant professor at Ohio State University and John Griffin, a professor at the University of Texas. The two researchers had purported that USDT tokens were in 2017 used in the Bitfinex exchange to manipulate Bitcoin price.
Bitfinex, Tether Termed the Report Bogus
Both Tether and Bitfinex came out guns blazing to refute the claims. They went as far as terming it flawed and claimed that it been prepared using crooked data.
In its most recent filing, the complainants went ahead to point out:
“First, the study still concludes that USDT was being used to manipulate bitcoin prices. But importantly, the updates go further than the original study in connecting the manipulation to a single entity, concluding that ‘one large player on Bitfinex uses [USDT] to purchase large amounts of Bitcoin when prices are falling and following the printing of [USDT].’”
What was in the Report?
It’s important to note that the study in question was accepted and published by the Journal of Finance. According to the plaintiff, there was a strong suggestion in this report that the executives at the exchange either facilitated the price manipulation or were well aware of the fact that it was taking place.
Professor Griffin, one of the researchers involved in its preparation, has gone on the public record and informed the Wall Street Journal that if the exchange was not behind the manipulation, then it was someone that they often transact with, the complainant added.
In their recent update to their original paper, the researchers went ahead to claim that the price manipulation that occurred at the time had been caused by a single Bitcoin whale.
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