Crypto markets are seeing a tentative recovery today, June 25, as data from Coin360[1] shows, after yesterday saw leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin[2] (BTC) hit its lowest level yet this year.
Market visualization from Coin360[3]
Bitcoin[4] (BTC) is trading around $6,270[5] at press time, up about 1.3 percent over the 24-hour period. Yesterday, June 24, BTC plummeted to $5,833, its lowest price level in 2018, and a price point it had not hit since October 2017. A rapid three-hour bounce yesterday between 2 and 5 PM UTC saw the coin recover back to around $6,200, today reclaiming a further $100.
Bitcoin price chart. Source: Cointelegraph Bitcoin Price Index[6]
Earlier today, the release[7] of 250 million more Tether[8] (USDT) tokens – a stablecoin that claims[9] to be backed 1:1 by the US dollar, but has yet to prove its basis in a public audit[10] – raised concern amongst crypto commentators. Tether issuance has previously drawn allegations[11] of suspicious positive knock-on effects on BTC price performance.
According to Tether’s OmniExplorer[12], today’s issuance occurred just before 3 PM UTC:
Starting at 3 PM UTC, Bitcoin did see a solid 2.2 percent[13] rise from $6,166 to $6,305 in the space of about 45 minutes – but the coin’s price spike today appears to have set in earlier, when the coin began to recover from its intraday low of $6,108 around 2 PM UTC.
A much-discussed[14] paper released[15] June 13 by John M. Griffin and Amin Shams of the University of Texas argued that Tether has been “used to provide price support and
