Figures from Cboe tracking $TSLA stocks against Bitcoin confirm that while BTC/USD has sealed 30% gains since Jan. 1, the former is up more, at 38%.
Bitcoin investors face double disappointment from Elon Musk this month as data shows Tesla is the one investment outdoing BTC in 2020.
Against the expectations of many, Musk’s firm has become the star of stock markets this month, defying macro pressures to reach all-time highs of $589 on Wednesday.
Tesla hits all-time high
The progress follows recent comments by Musk, who previously hinted he was a major fan of cryptocurrency. As Cointelegraph reported, he now says he is “neither here nor there” on Bitcoin, and has shared concerns about its use for illicit purposes.
While BTC/USD has appeared to feed off current geopolitical pressures centered on China’s coronavirus outbreak, its returns have still failed to beat Tesla’s.
“Apparently not the best performing asset this year”, Cointelegraph Markets analyst Mati Greenspan summarized comparing the two assets.
…But BTC clinches long-term gains crown
Fellow Cointelegraph analyst Michaël van de Poppe highlighted the similar market capitalizations of Tesla and Bitcoin, as $120 billion and $170 billion respectively.
“Just to give perspectives of how small our market is”, he summarized on Twitter.
Tesla stock versus Bitcoin, Jan. 1, 2020-present.
Zooming out, Bitcoin’s ten-year performance remains king. At nearly 9 million percent, Tesla’s rise to current levels from around $20 in 2010 provides little competition.
Musk has kept quiet on advancing the Bitcoin cause in a manner that differentiates him from other tech industry figures.
Notably, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has gone public with support for Bitcoin, including participating in the Lightning Torch transaction relay last year.
Tether Refutes Paper Naming USDT Manipulation as Cause of 2017 BTC Bull Run
Tether has issued a response to a recently surfaced paper that alleges that a single whale manipulated the market to cause 2017’s bull run in Bitcoin price.
The response
Tether, which is behind the dollar-backed stablecoin USDT, published the response on the company’s website on Nov. 7, an announcement that crypto exchange and sister company Bitfinex echoed on the same day.
In no uncertain terms, Tether denied the findings of the coming paper, even accusing the authors – John M. Griffin and Amin Shams – of unethical motivations:
“To obtain publication, Griffin and Shams have released a weakened yet equally flawed version of their prior article. The revised paper is a watered-down and embarrassing walk-back of its predecessor.”
The paper itself has yet to be published, but its key findings surfaced via Bloomberg on Nov. 4, as Cointelegraph reported at the time. It will reportedly appear in the peer-reviewed Journal of Finance.
Recap of allegations of market manipulation
According to Griffin and Shams’ findings, an unknown party using Tether’s stablecoin USDT and sister exchange Bitfinex allegedly manipulated the market into the bull run at the end of 2017 that saw Bitcoin reach all-time-high prices of over $20,000 before suffering a sudden crash that led to the onset of crypto winter.
As the Wall Street Journal reported at the time, the paper strongly implies that the single large whale in question was Bitfinex itself. “If it’s not Bitfinex”, Griffin told the journal, “it’s somebody they do business with very frequently.”
Other scandals involving Bitfinex and Tether
At the beginning of October, a law firm in New York filed a class-action lawsuit against Tether and Bitfinex, accusing the pair of using USDT to manipulate the crypto market.
In April, the New York Attorney General filed a suit against the two companies that alleged that Tether – which claims to back its tokens 1-to-1 with the United States dollar to acheive stability in value – had illicitly covered Bitfinex’s loss of $850 million using funds from Tether’s token-backing reserves.
