Research Affiliates Quant Warns of Bitcoin Market Manipulation (Bloomberg)
(Bloomberg) — In 2017, Alex Pickard had made so much money from Bitcoin that he quit his job in finance and moved to Washington state to mine digital coins full time. Less than a year later, the venture had failed and he was back at quant firm Research Affiliates.
Citing his own cautionary tale, the vice president of research has a warning for all the new crypto diehards: the market is likely being manipulated.
“Perhaps BTC is just a bubble driven by a frenzy of retail, and some institutional, money eager to get a piece of the action,” Pickard wrote in a report titled “Bitcoin: Magic Internet Money” posted on the Research Affiliates website. “Alternatively, and far likelier in my opinion, is that this ‘bubble’ is more fraud than frenzy.”
In 2018, founder Rob Arnott co-authored a paper that compared cryptocurrencies to the dot-com mania and cast doubt over their ability to ever become money for transactions.
“If the market manipulation story is true, then BTC is not in a bubble in the traditional sense, but is in the midst of something that could be much worse,” said Pickard.
