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The four basis-point increase in Bitcoin prices explains less than 1 percent of the variance. While it technically meets normal standards of statistical significance, given the guesswork the authors had to do to collect data and the complexity of the analysis, I consider it more likely to be noise than signal.
There's a big difference between "statistical significance" and actually meaningful claims like "Tether manipulation is responsible for the price reaching $20,000." It looks like Tether manipulation may have had a very, very small -- but technically noticeable -- effect.
From skimming the previous articles, it also seems like there's a tendency for naysayers to conflate "not random" with "manipulation" and I'm not sure there is basis for that. This ties in to correlation vs. causation. Sure, perhaps there are statistical irregularities, but have the researchers conclusively explained them? It sounds like their methods don't account for all possible variables involved:
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That is indeed strong evidence that the 87 hours following the hours with the largest Bitcoin and tether flows are not random. But we already knew they weren't random, they were times of high transaction volume, which would be expected to have more volatile prices than average, and trading volume was much higher on the upswings than the downswings.
