Bitcoin Forum

Hello readers of bitcointalk, Some years ago the price of Bitcoin could be well predicted and followed by small retail traders but since bitcoin gains it most recent highest awareness in 2017 and made a record surge in price from $1000 to $19,900/$20,000 in exchange, followed by over 50% correction in price it has become very difficult for major players to predict the price of Bitcoin.
Regardless of the continuous increasing awareness of the use of bitcoin with daily increasing demand for bitcoin, its price since the correction in January 2018 has not been seen above $20,000. Personally from general speaking and my own awareness of the market as an hedge fund manager. i would say that the price of Bitcoin is under institution (In this case institutions are Exchange) manipulation base on the following reasons.
1, They control huge volume of Bitcoin in daily exchange
2, They set the major Limit and Stop orders in Bitcoin price hence they set the Bid and the Ask.

I will like to know if you agree with me and what impact you think price manipulation may have in the price of bitcoin in future.

There were no evidence of these bitcoin exchanges manipulating the price of bitcoin. Though there are cases on the former CHinas bitcoin exchanges but were now closed. But the exchanges can also affect the price of bitcoin when they sell their bitcoin or bought many bitcoin but this is not manipulation. Manipulation is when they fake the volume of bitcoin or dollars in their site, but there are no clear evidence about it so this is just a conspiracy theory.

I dont think there's faking volume in bitcoin because every transaction is recorded. And manipulation cannot only mean faking. It may mean that you have a huge amount of bitcoin and because of this, you can control the price hike and the price dump. We can never say exchanges do some sort of manipulation however maybe he means Mt Gox. Because after the selling of Mt Gox bitcoin finds it hard to recover

It's really hard to tell because no one really knows what's going on behind closed doors. I personally would like to believe that it isn't rampant, but that may be too optimistic of me. What we know for sure is that it can happen, and that it has happened (https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/15/researchers-finds-that-one-person-likely-drove-bitcoin-from-150-to-1000/).

You may also want to read this article  (https://medium.com/legolas-exchange/how-exchanges-manipulate-the-price-of-bitcoin-6e7e4b99a4a)for some info on the subject. It's written by the CPO of the Legolas exchange so it's going to be biased, but he does make a point in as far as transparent order books go. Making all order books transparent probably won't close off every opportunity for manipulation, but it's just about as good a start exchanges can have in my opinion.

I still know that the price in any financial market is manipulated because that is the only way profit can be made.
If price was not manipulated then prices will be fix in financial market as it will be unwise to purchase a stock above the current price and selling below the lowest price in order to impact the market. or as regards bitcoin because of the increasing demand then it should continue to go north without any form of correction.
Prices go up to attract greed and demand and they make it drop to attract panic selling. Panic selling enables big players to buy cheap why greedy buying enables them to sell high it's that simple guys or else you start to view the market from this point of view you may never be successful in trading any market.

There are lots of price manipulation theory out there and this is the most absurd by far i think, there are lots of exchanger out there and you hope or suppose that they work cooperative in having a huge order altogether?? If all the exchangers are buying then who will be selling? If the volume is bigger in one side then what happened when the other side can't cope with the quantity of the volume? There will be no transactions taken however rather than talking about exchanger, there exist futures trading which using contracts to manipulate the price using US$ volume rather than having bitcoin volume and i think its more logical than this.

I certainly don't agree with your point here. Definitely they are controlling a huge volumes of crypto currencies including bitcoin but that certainly doesn't empower them to limit the bid price as well as the ask price. IF an exchange is limiting these prices according to the market price, they are doing it to prevent fake volume. Even though I am not aware if any change is doing it, I believe not!

Also I don't understand that fact that the bitcoin price is going down because of the big players. One simple question I have here, If I have 1000 bitcoins  in my storage, I would definitely want the price to soar high on the contrary of going down. because if the price goes high, then only my net worth will increase. My net worth won't increase if the bitcoin price goes down. So why would a big player of crypto currency market want the price to go down? 

Unlike you these market traffic controllers have all the time it takes.
Carefully study the price of btc$, btceth, eth$ and SCbtc.
You will notice how they first took btcusd up why other pairs were low against btc n the public was buying the news report were good. Just after they made the public purchase btc at 19k 20k with CME btc futures fundamentals they held  the price and did some correction  and started buying back btc from the public as eth Ada SC iota neo usdth soon started getting stronger why btc dollar was gradually declining and people were buying other cryptocurrencies and sell btc out of loss. The negative review of miners fee fueled the whole move down with Germany n china rejecting btc. This is just one way if exchange manipulation and accumulation/distribution. It's complex if you don't understand it. Currently the price of btc is not far from resuming recovery to double top. If the recovery does not resume from the current move a last new low to 5600/6000 is expected before the official move resumes.
The good news to enable the quote higher prices in btc will soon start coming up. They just likely need some more trap traders in the wrong direction.

Some exchanges were known for notoriously faking trade volumes and such, but I haven't come across a solid proof that exchanges are indeed participating on insider trading, and if that's the case that might fall under money laundering (IMO) though still depends on the country's laws where the exchanges are registered. True that there are some times where trades are somewhat halted on exchanges especially if there are huge volumes going around the platform, but that per se isn't a proof of them faking trades and controlling the market.

I agree your opinion, I also have some opinions about bitcoin in the future. If bitcoin just settles like this, it is likely that the bitcoin will fade in the future (it will not disappear). The price at bitcoin will decrease and decrease, because most people only think for themselves, investpun now many disappeared, compared to miner bitcoin

The lower price of bitcoin will make people to loose interest in Bitcoin because that is tthe intent and once the major player start offering to buy more bitcoin in addition to what they got from the public at lower as they now offer to buy more at higher price knowing fully well that there are only few sellers left, the same people who sold at lower price will start buying at a loss and hoping to make some profit.

It's really hard to tell because no one really knows what's going on behind closed doors , we have heard so many exchanges manipulating the price of bitcoin,  especially that of bitcoin cash which is owned by Roger ver,  but we don't have a full confirmation if this manipulations are real or just another FUD cooked up by the media in other to make us scared of exchanges and withdraw trading.

Some Chinese exchanges used faked trade volume to attract more customers however I think these financial shenanigans didn't affect the global price of Bitcoin as they were isolated incidents and only existed in these particular exchanges with manipulated volume and sometimes Bitcoin price. I have heard about huge price discrepancies on Indian Bitcoin exchanges as well. It's a local phenomenon though.

From your point of view, it's just a hearsay or some read ups from the news online but there are no evidence shows the manipulation especially to those big exchanges. It may have been an opportunity for all bitcoin investors seeing and listed bitcoin on such exchanges which can bring huge impact that attracts more investors and can make a healthy market.

I personally think that due to the amount of shorting that people were doing on bitcoin the exchanges helped in liqudating these shorts, I know they aren't able to do it PERSONALLY but I think they played a part on getting some people to buy coins (a LOT of coins) in orderto shift the market to go their way.

They're out to make a good amount of money if those shorts get liquidated, and they did. Who knows who does these things, but if it is the exchanges they're EVIL.s

I honestly think that price manipulation should be illegal, but let's face it, we are in an unregulated market (still).

For the traders and even for the masses, who can get either excited or frightened (I always say the market is bipolar), this could be a problem. But please remember price manipulation is not done for long term, but to make profits. And there is arbitrage and the market has ways to counter that.

For smart investors, long term holders that will use Bitcoin either as a mean of payment or part of their diversified investment portfolio (another asset class) I think it is not very relevant. Honest opinion.

Why do you say so? Manipulation is not illegal, it is just a destiny for the whales to have a huge mass of investment and if they withdraw their money, the price will absolutely dump.

The problem with the new traders, they are just believing for the news they have heard. They don't make their own judgment on what they saw, noticed and analysis. They tend to sell their coins because they don't have enough justification to hold it. Definitely, it will result for a dump.

No one can really prove for sure if there is any manipulation of price. This is mere speculation. Otherwise the supposed exchanges would have met their waterloo. Yes, there may be fake buy or sell walls to either push a crypto price up or bring it down but I think it's a question of everyone does transact business depending on their strength of bargain. It isn't manipulation per se. It's trade arbitration. Any keen watcher would discover this price difference from exchanges across. Sometimes, it's infinitesimal. Other times, it is huge.

first you need to know that it is no longer 2010-2013 anymore. there is no Mt Gox that controls 80% of the volume and the whole market with it. we are living in a day where exchanges have barely 10% of the total volume and don't have the influence that you may think they have. there are lots of big exchanges now compared to older days.
with that said manipulations happen, there is no stopping them. they exist in all markets not just bitcoin. but the "impact" of them are diminishing as the market grows and we are at a point where we can say they are not a major impact anymore.

I do not agree with you, bitcoin fluctuations are not controlled by exchange but by demand, but exchange only limits and regulates every volume and transaction in exchange. and if demand is high then bitcoin prices will also be high. the exchange has no power to control the exchange except only a little.

I disagree.
the ability to predict bitcoin has not changed whatsoever. if anything it is becoming increasingly simple to predict it as time goes by and the market grows. the rise and the way it happened doesn't change anything. speculation is not something you do once and be done with it  because that is the correct one. no. things change and with it the speculation changes too. we never had the mass adoption of Japan before 2017, it happened so price went up fast and big. and a lot of other things.

none of these means price is manipulated just because your initial speculation 2 years ago were wrong. it just means you forgot to adjust.

they keyword in your comment is "THEY". so unless you think 20 different bitcoin exchanges are secretly cooperating together to manipulate the price, then you are wrong.