Analysts have not found any obvious signs of bitcoin price manipulations by a group of traders. The strongest impact on the price of the cryptocurrency is being made not by market participants, but by the news.

Specialists from the American Institute of Economic Research (AIER) and the University of Missouri published a joint study on the movements of the bitcoin price. According to the report, the bitcoin exchange rate is most sensitive to the news background.

The strongest movements of the bitcoin rate coincided with the news about significant events related to the cryptocurrency.

The authors of the report stated that although the volatility and price movements could not always and totally be explained by the news, they did not find evidence that the market is strongly manipulated.

“It does suggest that the market is not being driven entirely by manipulation or the behavior of small numbers of traders,” experts concluded.

Researchers mention events that influenced the bitcoin price within the period from January 2016 to November 2017. So, on 15 January 2016, after the former core developer, Mike Hearn said in a blog post that he decided to sell all of his remaining holdings because bitcoin had "failed," the bitcoin rate sank 16%. On 11 January 2017, after the Chinese authorities announced an investigation of market activity on the largest crypto-exchanges in China, bitcoin fell by 14%. On 20 July 2017 after voting on scaling solution in the bitcoin network and the preliminary agreement on the activation of SegWit, bitcoin went up by 25.4%.

The greatest impact on the bitcoin rate is provided by news reports related to government regulation, technological changes (scaling decisions and possible forks), news about new investment opportunities and personal opinions.

At the same time, the report recognizes that the cryptocurrency market remains rather thin, and therefore susceptible to manipulation by large players.