Bitcoin Price Jump Of $1,000 Is 'Suspicious,' Analyst Says

Bitcoin (BTC) jumped to almost a $1,000 gain from its daily low of $7,080 on Wednesday, but one analyst is skeptical of the sudden bull move.

Mati Greenspan, founder of Quantum Economics and a former senior market analyst for Etoro, tweeted a BTC chart that he suspects is out of the ordinary. The price of Bitcoin was hovering between the range of $7,250 and its daily low mere moments before the surge to $7,755.

Greenspan considers this unusual because volumes were unelevated recently, and the spike seemed like it was caused by a Bitcoin whale. Greenspan told Forbes, "It all points to the assumption that this was the outcome of a single player with a large buy order. Or in other words... a large whale stacking sats."

Whales

BTC whales can cause big moves in the market. One particular case which was highlighted by The New Web happened last year between Aug. 29 and Sept. 6. A whale unloaded $1 billion worth of BTC to exchanges that contributed to a 15 percent drop in BTC price.

Manipulation

Tether (USDT) is also a culprit for causing irregular movements in Bitcoin's prices. One study even noted that the bull run that the crypto world saw in 2017 wasn't caused by a legion of speculators but by a single market manipulator -- a lone BTC whale -- and two companies, Bitfinex and Tether Unlimited.

Tethers are reported to be minted then transferred to Bitfinex when Bitcoin's price goes down. Then, those USDTs are exchanged for BTCs to pump up the price. It all checks out from this point, but when Tethers are minted without actual demand, then that's a clear case of manipulation.

"We find that the identified patterns are not present on other flows, and almost the entire price impact can be attributed to this one large player," professors John M. Griffin and Amin Shams wrote. "We map this data across both blockchains and find that the one player or entity (labeled as 1LSg throughout the paper) is behind the majority of the patterns we document."

That whale wasn't identified, but Tether and Bitfinex are suspected to be aware of what was going on.

A few hours after Wednesday's daily high, BTC's price started receding and had completed erased the bull move. BTC settled at $7,308 as of press time.