Bitcoin Forum

Will (and can) Bitcoin be artificially lowered by banks just like did with gold/silver?

Seems like bitcoin is on the edge of a cliff at the moment.

The little guys (0-1BTC) and currently stacking hard right now while the whales (100+) are neutral or slightly selling.

Meanwhile price is still going slightly down.

From a whales perspective, it doesn't make sense to jump in to drive the price up from here. Because the little guys are already stacking harder than they have ever.

Will the little guys end up holding the bags (like they always end up doing)?

There have been a lot of accusations with crypto exchanges and it does seem that it's likely for them to be able to do like silver and gold smiths did and start inflating the supply of coins. The ideas of holding your own keys only works really if you're good with security/technology, if you're not good with either of those then you'll probably have a hard time and might lose more than leaving funds on an exchange...

The banks took on what the smiths were doing but who knows if it's possible for crypto exchanges or banks to carry out what has been done in the past with gold and silver.

It's not exactly like how banks are manipulating gold/silver. But in terms of possibility, I guess it is possible. If they are really bent on doing it, it's just a matter of how much. While Bitcoin is publicly traded 24 hours globally, it only has less than $20 billion in 24-hour volume. If the banks are willing to shell out billions just to play with Bitcoin's price, they could do it. But it doesn't mean the little guys are always at the disadvantageous position. They could simply ride the wave.

Pretty hard to say, really. There will always be stackers with any price; and I'm really not sold on the thought that whales have almost total control over the markets.

But my gut says that bitcoin does have a good amount of room to drop as well, as the cryptocurrency markets are still pretty hot with the shitcoin gamblers. The bottom might be the time when the masses finally give up on cryptocurrency "investing", because right now there's still A LOT of moonboys.

^Just my guess though. No fundamental backing whatsoever.

Maybe not push the price that high but it makes sense for whales to step in to defend a floor price and counter those who wants to drive it lower like institutions and banks.

Who knows what others would do. The market is filled with long-term investors and speculators.

Yes! Banks and deep-pocketed financial corporations can indeed manipulate bitcoin and give whatever direction they want! Such kind of manipulations are happening in crypto market since long but in small scales. But when billions of dollars are exchanges in crypto market, it certainly has the power to manipulate bitcoin market. That's why when big corporates are investing billions into crypto market, that's never a good news to me!

We have seen what a tweet from Elon Musk can do to the market. So when corporations hold too much of bitcoins that is publicly known, you can understand the impact they can create in the market. As of now, not a lot of corporates have shown interest into bitcoin but the interest is constantly rising. This may very well go against small holders like us!

If they can become whales yes they can probably artificially lower the prices and I don't think that it's nothing to scoff at because they are probably going to make the artificial drop a hard one because as it's a decentralized system, they will try to establish authority.

It is possible but to the certain extend. My topic :Money creation system - is bitcoin creation resistant? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5094088.msg49096584#msg49096584) where I state that 21 mln BTC max cap of btc might already be broken by fractional reserve system implemented by big exchanges or "I'll hold your crypto for you" guys.

It is also possible to block price growth using unlimited amount of money that they have shorting BTC using futures.

"JPMorgan fined $1.26 billion for manipulating precious metals" - https://www.straitstimes.com/business/banking/jpmorgan-fined-126-billion-for-manipulating-precious-metals-treasury-market

"JPMorgan slammed with $920m penalty" - https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2020/9/29/bbjpmorgan-admits-spoofing-by-15-traders-2-desks-in-record-deal

"EU Fines Banks For Manipulating Currency Prices" - https://www.pymnts.com/news/regulation/2019/european-union-bank-fines-currency-manipulation/

"Deutsche Bank to Pay Over $130 Million to Settle Charges" - https://news.bloomberglaw.com/white-collar-and-criminal-law/deutsche-bank-reaches-100-million-deal-to-settle-u-s-charges

"Deutsche Bank Fine for Silver Market Manipulation" - https://www.swissbullion.eu/en/posts/deutsche-bank-fined-for-market-manipulation

If gold was not strong enough to fight manipulations from big banks ... BTC wont do win either.

The big banks will always find a way to make the wealth circulate only for them. Gold and silver prices are deliberately pulled down to make it look uninteresting for investors and for a long time many people had been attracted to something else. Making Bitcoin uninteresting will also include the fud they spread and today they have been discussing regulations that will also make it hard for investors.


The fight is still not over though so with countries like El Salvador and the government preparing to have their mining farms of their own I think BTC will still win.

No but there are far better avenues to manipulate the prices.

FUD being the most obvious, lack of research by the average investors puts them vulnerable to many kinds of FUD and results in them panic selling.

There has been evidence that Mt Gox operated bots to artificially game the price before their collapse. I wouldn't rule out exchanges to not be having a hand at any potential market manipulation.

How would the banks artificially lower the price of Bitcoin? They do not have direct control and the only way they would be able to do it is via FUD which can easily be refuted. That is the best thing about Bitcoin it is immune from direct control of any entity and the only thing is suffers from is FUD. Our job is to refute the FUD and get the word out there that there are others trying to create confusion around Bitcoin and drive the prices down.

I don't see it happening though, no one has control because it's decentralised.


Yeah, it seems at the current price, this is bargain hunting for average Joe as they can do DCA to continue to stack sats.


Perhaps the right term could be trading sideways.


On the contrary, the whales can do the most bargain hunting as they have deep pockets. The problem is that there are may speculators that are shorting bitcoin in the last 2 months that's why the price seems to be on a sideway pattern.

Banks couldn't do it even if they wanted to. Sure, you can have all those derivatives and synthetics or whatever you want to call them, but I think it's gradually becoming clear that market impact is at best, medium-term, and at worst, increasingly temporary or non-evident.

Long term, fundamentals rule, and you can't change the fact of actual supply, actual adoption (through wallet creations and network use).

They can do what whales do, they have the money to be like a whale after all not to mention that they are working on fractional reserve banking meaning that they can borrow money without a collateral from the government and with no interest meaning that they can borrow a lot of money so they can be whales and manipulate the market.

Gold & silver is very decentralized. They own a lot of its supply though and so they can move markets at their will. If they get to own a significant % of the BTC supply as well, they'll be able to do the same thing with its price. And then, there's the exchange manipulation that doesn't even require you to own a lot of its supply.. just have enough exchange usage and you can manipulate minds and markets so easily.

What do you mean by "artificially lowered by the banks"?You mean that banks will start buying and HODLing large amounts of Bitcoin?This will actually boost the Bitcoin price to the sky.
Banks cannot lower the Bitcoin supply or demand,because they aren't actively buying/selling Bitcoin.
The current situation on the BTC market has nothing to do with the banks.The Bitcoin market is always a little bit stagnant during the summer.This is normal.The market will become more active in October,November and December.

As long as they hold enough supply I suppose? Though that would take an enormous amount imo and I don't think it'd be possible to venture deep without people from the scene actually discovering them. Long story short it's possible, there are various ways they can do so, some of which involve trickery while some are just straight up trying to direct the market however they want directly.

Well, ignorance can be solved by time, I just hope they DO actually solve it, just so that they aren't like headless chickens prattling about. I'd reckon most would know about crypto already at that point where banks are actually trying to do something about it head on.

My perspective to this is that the whales don't have choice any choice than to relax their nerves. Surely at every bear you expect that new investors will come in from introduction by friends and old small investors will increase their stacks because they have seen last performance. New whales will emerge at bears that is undoubtedly so.

If this happens, the banks will buy bitcoins and give users tokens of the same value as bitcoins that are managed in centralized networks just as PayPal did and Visa plans to do.
Banks won't act unless they get a green light from governments, something that won't happen soon (at least globally).

Therefore, the answer depends on the extent to which individuals adopt Bitcoin.

Maybe Bitcoin is artificially lowered even now, and that happened after Blackrock, Vangurad and similar companies entered the market with Microstartegy.
They are manipulating all other markets like gold and silver and they have extra motives to do the same for bitcoin because nobody can control Bitcoin and it's limited supply.
Everyone is probably waiting to see some big move, but I won't be surprised to see bitcoin slipping down more.

You can't combat ignorance with time, Bitcoin is such a novel and complex subject that any mis-information is likely to be taken as it is and spread like wildfire. Majority of the investors are not interested in knowing the technical workings of Bitcoin and thus it is easy for the mass media to manipulate the perception of the people. Like it or not, FUD is something that is intrinsically difficult to eliminate with Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is under the control of large investors --%95 of trading volume comes from whale investors at any given time, an increasing portion of these very large investors are now institutions... so yes as we have seen already, we can expect the market to be manipulated so as to increase the gain of these large stake-holders.

I've been thinking about this, it's just whether they do it consistently or not, if they have this scheme to cast a fishing rod it's roughly like a powerful organization, they don't lack the money to keep going.  print.  Let's say, the budget is out of balance, and a bunch of withdrawals... They'll try to do that I guess.

i think it is exactly the opposite. meaning the "little guys" are either waiting on the sidelines or have already bought the amount they wanted to buy. after all we have been in this price range for a very long time. and buying small amounts doesn't take that long.

on the other hands the whales are the ones who are selling or better said trying to manipulate the market to get it to dump more but failing so far.

Bitcoin's price can easily be manipulated by whales, I would believe so. Because they can easily pump in cash to amp the price, or withdraw some of their bitcoins to dump bitcoin's value. Bitcoin is indeed decentralized but personalities, shadow figures, and these whales are the newest form of institutions that can artificially lower its price. Good thing about this though is the fact that bitcoin is a for-everyone currency, so it thrives in the amount of supporters and holders it gets. This means that we can counterbalance the power bag holders have over bitcoin with numbers advantage. Can't emphasize how big the power of misinformation is over the cryptocurrency industry. One bad story about bitcoin that could reach a huge amount of people could literally shift the market down to a crash. Of course there are other factors like pandemics just as what happened last year. But nothing beats FUD.

Bitcoin will not be artificially depressed. Generally speaking, giant whales will keep prices down. Then someone will buy it. Unless something irresistible happens, the price of Bitcoin will keep falling, but the probability of Bitcoin being artificially depressed is not very high. big. Because there are still a steady stream of people waiting for the price of Bitcoin to fall.

I think the battle is not over, even though the bank wants to destroy bitcoin, I think their business will not run smoothly, because many have already held bitcoin, and there are also governments that have legalized bitcoin, and are ready to create their own mining fields, to overcome this. bank attacks, so the point is never to be afraid of all their attacks, we just need to be vigilant, and we also have to find ways, to respond to all their attacks..