The price of an asset goes up when money is being poured into the asset. For many exchanges "money" means USDT, so it makes perfect sense that USDT would be printed before a rally, regardless of malfeasance on tether's part.

Is there any proof or data on Tether issuance preceding rallies? Because I have seen this claim often made on Twitter, but never with any sources.

I personally dislike Tether and avoid it, but strong claims require strong evidence.

Here's an econ paper that studies that question: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342185292_Is_Bitcoi...

Thanks, I will have to read it carefully, but from the abstract it doesn't seem as simple as "increased Tether printing makes BTC rally." But if there is in fact a statistically significant correlation, I would personally wager there's causation and hedge my bets accordingly.

I think the abstract does effectively say that: "these patterns are most consistent with the supply‐based hypothesis of unbacked digital money inflating cryptocurrency prices." And this point is made more forcefully in the paper.

FWIW, I don't have a strong opinion on the evidence presented in the paper -- the analyses seem sensible, but this isn't my field of expertise, so I'd be hard pressed to point out, for example, what alternative analyses they could / should have done.

Also, it's not even obvious to me that unbacked Tether causing the BTC price rallies is necessarily a reason to pull out; markets are weird.

Sounds like a winning trading strategy to me then.