Ok, prove me wrong.
I think the burden is on you to prove that "Tether printing" is important. Even the University of Texas report
pointed to a very low level of statistical relevance. Tether issuance may not be
random, but nobody has proven that it has a meaningful effect on price:
The authors suggest the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex buys bitcoin with another cryptocurrency -- tether -- to push up Bitcoin prices. How much? Four basis points per 100 bitcoin. With Bitcoin at $10,000, for example, that means Bitfinex spends $1 million to push the price up to $10,004.
Here I state that a bear market, which is a prolongued (3 years +) correction of crypto prices, will never happen reason being the occasional bursts of tether issuing which is something nobody can police.
Any number of exchanges/brokers could be engaging in price manipulation. I believe the Chinese exchanges (particularly Okcoin.cn, Okcoin.com futures and Huobi) heavily manipulated price (or attempted to) for years. This is true of regulated markets as well.
It doesn't need to be proven. It's just pure logic applied to economics. You have an injection of capital in the books and this inflates crypto prices.
Also as you mention most of the existing real capital in the books is due to wash trading so a real injection (such as tether) would have an even magnified amplitude of effect.