worries grow that the price of bitcoin is being propped up - where to buy a smart board

More and more virtual currency investors are worried that the price of bitcoin and other digital tokens is artificially supported by a widely used exchange, Bitfinex, which has a history of hackers and opaque business practices.
On December, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the US regulator, summoned Bitfinex.
Bloomberg first reported the news on Tuesday and was confirmed by sources familiar with the summons but not allowed to openly discuss the ongoing investigation, leading to a sell-off
Closed in most virtual currencies.
The person behind Bitfinex issued a virtual currency called Tether.
Unlike most digital tokens, each tether should be supported by traditional currency --
(USD ).
When investors give them dollars, a new tether token will be issued.
One dollar is worth a token.
Because of the credibility of this peg to the dollar, Tether is often used to buy other virtual currencies such as Bitcoin.
However, in recent months, many investors have sounded the alarm about the tether.
Created new tether worth hundreds of millions of dollars;
This is almost always the case when prices of other virtual currencies fall.
According to Bitfinex's multiple analysis of the data, the Bitfinex exchange used the tether to buy bitcoin and other tokens in large quantities to help their prices recover.
"It's getting more and more worrying because you see the same thing happening every time the market goes down," said partner Joey Kruger.
Pantra Capital, chief investment officer, runs several virtual money hedge funds.
"This may mean that many of the rebound in December and January may not be true.
"Long before the summons was released, Bitfinex gained a reputation for a lack of transparency and a chaotic structure, bitfinex is considered to have more trading European executives, Asian offices and Caribbean registrations than any other Bitcoin exchange in the world.
It is not clear what information regulators are seeking.
Technically, the tether token is issued by a separate company (called Tether)
This is owned and operated by the same person who runs Bitfinex. The C. F. T. C.
According to a person familiar with the matter, the company summoned Bitfinex while summoning it.
Bitfinex did not comment on the subpoena or recent reports about the tether, nor did company officials respond to requests for comment on multiple occasions.
In the past, exchange executives and spokespersons said that their customers only used tether to buy virtual currency or they might use the dollar.
Bitfinex entered into a contract with a US company, Friedman, to audit its records and to demonstrate that the operation of its tether was out of scope.
But Bitfinex said last week that it was cutting off contact with Friedman a few months after waiting to complete the audit.
The news raised more doubts.
"This is a signal to the market that those who have carefully studied the situation have believed: there is a problem here," said Jill Carlson . " A former trader at Goldman Sachs is now consulting various virtual currency companies.
"The dissolution of the relationship between the auditor and the company is rarely a good sign that the company's behavior is in line with market best practices.
"The worry about Bitfinex is one of several issues that have helped drive down the value of virtual money over the past month, after a year of soaring virtual money.
Regulators in several countries, including South Korea and the United States, have expressed concerns about manipulation and fraud and have hinted at a crackdown.
In Japan, Coincheck, a large virtual currency exchange, was hacked at the end of January, losing nearly $0. 5 billion in virtual currency NEM. Question the relatively untested security practices of the virtual currency exchange.
However, Japan is one of the few countries where regulators regulate virtual currency exchanges.
Many of the largest virtual currency exchanges, including Bitfinex, are largely unregulated.
Bitfinex was hacked in 2015 and 2016, and lanyard was hacked at the end of last year --
Total losses exceeded $100 million.
The company shared some details about the hackers.
But after the biggest theft in 2016, Wells Fargo and its bank in Taiwan cut it off.
Bank issues make it difficult for customers to get money from Bitfinex, but traders continue to use the exchange, in part because of tether.
Teher provided an initial report to the accounting firm Friedman last year, indicating that it had a US dollar bank account corresponding to all issued Tether.
But the report is far from conclusive, and Tether has never had a real audit, which has led to the suspicion that Bitfinex may print virtual currencies without any support.
Tether currency is valuable to traders because it allows them to hold stable tokens linked to dollar value and move quickly between virtual currency exchanges.
But there is a disadvantage.
Because the identity of the tether holder is not always clear, the movement of the virtual token between the exchanges
Across borders-
This raised concerns among lawyers about money laundering.
Tether extensions other than Bitfinex also spread the risk of its failure to other exchanges.
Market analysts have become particularly concerned about the speed and timing of new tether releases.
In the middle of the week
In January, $0. 45 billion in new lanyards were created, bringing the total lanyards to more than $2 billion.
Several anonymous reports circulating between traders, including a report posted on the website last week, pointed out the data of Bitfinex itself, indicates that the price of bitcoin often rises soon after the new tether is created, often due to Bitfinex's bulk trading.
"It's absolutely full of the taste of price manipulation," Tony acili, a security researcher and market analyst, wrote in his blogJanuary.
Many investors and traders opposed the criticism, pointing out that smart traders might just be looking for a purchase when the market goes down.
Jeremy Gardner, managing partner at investment firm Ausum Ventures, said: "My personal bias has made me tend to believe that Bitfinex is not using tether to manipulate the price of bitcoin . ".
"It would be very worrying if they tried to do so, and it's hard to imagine that this fraudulent offering could be single in terms of the current number-
The price of bitcoin is supported by one hand. ”But Mr.
Krug of paninto Capital said that if investors do use tether, they may also buy new tether when the market rises, but that's not the case.
Also, they don't always want it in the exact increments of $100 million as they used.
"When you see enough time, you start to wonder what's going on here ,"Krug said.
The Bitcoin community is sensitive to the possibility of price manipulation, as an academic team published an article in early January suggesting that the price of bitcoin was mt, the largest exchange at the time, in 2013. Gox.
Taylor Moore, one of the authors of the paper, said it was difficult to judge whether similar price manipulation would occur today, although he noted that it was difficult for anyone to determine anything due to lack of transparency.
"More assurance is needed that these transactions are actually legal and reflect the buying and selling of independent actors," he said . "
Moore, assistant professor at the University of Tulsa.
"Unless such oversight is implemented, we cannot believe that the exchange rate only reflects a reasonable source of supply and demand.