Behind the Bitcoin bubble Andy Kessler Share Via Read Full Story To figure out if you’re in a bubble, you need to find the source of the hot air. Obvious for GameStop, but for bitcoin, not so much. In July 2018, we wrote about the cryptocurrency company Tether, which issues tokens called tethers that trade under the symbol USDT and should be valued at $1—making the currency a “stablecoin." Tether’s creators might have manipulated bitcoin, a University of Texas paper suggests, by issuing tokens willy-nilly unbacked by real dollars and then buying bitcoin to jack up its price. (The company claims the research is flawed.)