According to @nic__carter, the Griffin and Shams paper’s publication in The Journal of Finance and its acceptance in media and policy circles to bolster crypto views in Washington, D.C. is a scandal that has not been scrutinized adequately (source: Nic Carter on X, Nov 3, 2025). The referenced study, Is Bitcoin Really Un-Tethered? by John M. Griffin and Amin Shams, was published by The Journal of Finance in 2022 and reports that large USDT transfers to exchanges were associated with subsequent BTC price increases during 2017–2018 (source: The Journal of Finance, 2022). For trading, the paper’s core empirical claim links Tether issuance to BTC price support, making USDT supply changes and exchange transfer flows a key watchlist metric when assessing liquidity-driven rallies and resilience in BTC (source: The Journal of Finance, 2022). Carter argues the study has been used to bolster crypto policy views in Washington, highlighting the need for traders to track U.S. stablecoin policy developments, which have been formally prioritized for oversight by U.S. authorities (sources: Nic Carter on X, Nov 3, 2025; President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, Report on Stablecoins, Nov 2021).