Hoffman was asked about a University of Texas research paper, released this week, which called into question 2017’s high of $19,000, claiming that Tether, a digital currency pegged to the US dollar, was “used to provide price support and manipulate cryptocurrency prices.”
There was concern at the time that prices were being pushed up at least partly by activity at cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex. Hoffman joked that there is always drama around Bitfinex, “whether they are getting hacked and so on”. “There has been lots of discussion about this on Reddit and other places, so the research paper’s findings were nothing new to those in the know,” he added.
“Every year people come up with clever ways to manipulate the markets and until this space gets big enough where there is stability to prevent that, we will keep seeing incidences like the one mentioned,” he said.
“And it’s not unlike other areas, Wall Street has issues from time to time with manipulation,” Hoffman stressed.
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