Bitcoin Forum

"The bottom line? The role of whales in the Bitcoin market may be overstated. The top 32 whales control around 6% of the supply, but that figure drops to 4.6% when lost Bitcoins are taken into account."

http://fortune.com/2018/10/10/can-the-whales-of-bitcoin-tank-the-market/

For me I don't think Whales alone are the one influencing the price, for me the prime suspect are the exchanges, alot of them gamble with investors money in the last bull run and are looking for ways to get their money back, another another school of thought says the institutional investors want to get into the market but at a fair price not 20K so they need to crash the market since they have the money 

I think bitcoin has pass the point where it can be manipulated by whales. It has become a more mature market where the price is being formed by collective forces rather than individual ones. It will take much more coins than the number indicated in the article to move the price considerably by a couple of so called whales.

I still think that a whale who holds a large sum of BTC or any other top 100 coin is able to turn the market blood red and keep it there for as long as the bags are sold. It's just the thing that BTC orders at the CMC price will get filled REALLY quickly in different exchanges.

If somebody would like to sell even 10BTC at once in one of the top exchanges the drop in BTC price would be perceptible. Liquidity isn't really that high.

6% or 4.6% it's by far enough to tank the market. Look what happened with the mt.gox coins that were sold recently, that wasn't anywhere near to the amounts you're speaking of and it really damaged the price. The orderbooks across the whole of the crypto market wouldn't cover the 4.6% of coins so any large sell order would create a huge downward spiral. 4.6% is around 1m bitcoin or 6bn dollars. That much money coming to market would never be swallowed up by buy orders.

Either both sides you can really say such possible things that do happen behind because seeing the market on this situation will really lead into those plausible scenarios and as you said, whales arent the only ones
who do really have the capability on influencing the price of the entire market but somehow they do have the position on such possible event but basing on those percentages it wont really be that enough but still can give out some significant impact.

Whlaes controlling the cryptocurrencies market is just a myth only. If you want to invest and money don't care any news or article. Most of the news sites and others sharing fake information only about cryptocurrencies.
No one like the emergence of decentralized platform and bitcoin.

This move may be continued but for long term they cannot manipulate the market.

more than 90% of bitcoins owned by hundreds account and it's not more than a thousand account and imagie if there was millions people are using crypto right now and does it make sense? it doesn't.
But these guys never try to do anything with it and remember someone that has been loosing 30k bitcoin caused by his wallet gets destroyed.

They hold large amount of bitcoin and they have a biggest portion in the market. They may not total control the market but at least they can influence the market and move a bit of it which lead people to follow the path that they are going through. And having that, they can collect the force that they need to do what they want with the help of the small holders who are being lead to panic by their news.

That's right! Whales can easily influence the market at any time whenever they wanted to which at some point small time investors will win or sometimes lose that's why we have to be vigilant when they will do something.

And I believe not only whales, known personalities and news are affecting the value of market whenever they utter something may bad or good.

News do really affect the market as they give emotional impact to the investors on what they must do.

Known personalities and even guesses of well known segment of TV shows that tackles with crypto are influencing as well. They are asking anyone whom can be titled as an 'expert' and will get the idea on where the market will go.

I agree with you, that's what im also thinking, the owner of the exchange is also the one manipulating the price of a coin

Well, it turns out that bitcoin diggers and traders are the most bitcoin holders. That made me quite surprised. I thought criminal whales were the most likely.
But anyway, that made me happy. Because criminals often get very bad results if they hold a high percentage of Bitcoin.

I think whales are not manipulating the market,, exchanges are manipulating the market..

They learned how to play the game to make extra money they can play the game with us..

Look how big binance is how much money they have..

They can destroy every wall in the market to bring the price higher to stimulate the mass and let them buy..

After the mass buys they can slowly sell it to the mass..

Im also in the stock market, but im for 99% sure that exchanges are the real bosses in this crypto world..

Binance can buy for 100 million dollar coins and add that coin to there exchange and dump it before everyone else..

But it doesnt matter maybe i bought the same coin and when they list it on there exchange i can make maybe money to..

Maybe the article is correct, but I do not know if that should be the approach. The big problem when talking about whales that can dump BTC is because they can do at a time when the book has few orders.

Dump and Pump does not occur just because someone owns a lot of coins. Today a dump of 3k occurred that generated great uncertainties in the market. But if the market is liquid, and Blockstream's new sidechain is essential for that, it's becoming increasingly expensive to promote that panic.

But, something like selling in a volume like was MtGox would still be destructive. So it's good that this article brings to light that there are few wallets that can do something like this.

Exchanges and large companies also have a significant impact. And this whole mechanism should come together and only then the market will change, but for now they are waiting for positive news, which in principle are not foreseen.

I also thought that to think about manipulating prices on certain exchanges to get money,but it was unfair if the exchange was cornered in the average value of crypto shares.The most important news that reports a drop or rise can also affect but still a group of daily traders will dominate the market.

the whale is always connected with the occurrence of a pump or dump, but is it only whales that can influence or control the market? remember, a fake news, or FUD alone can have an impact on the market. so keep believing in yourself and ignore if you don't agree with him.

wow..who have more than 12.000 BTC?its over when this guy sell all he have, anything could happen when those whales enter to the exchange and make bitcoin price to 100$ again

The thing is though, they don't need to do it all by themselves. So long as anyone has enough influence to cause even a slight price drop, then lots of people will start to panic sell and the thing will snowball. It doesn't have to be the whales by themselves causing the whole thing, they just need to have enough of an effect to set it in motion and it will gather pace all by itself.

i dont agree with you. they can light the fuse of a pump or dump in crypto market. even selling few hundreds of bitcoin in a very short time period can affect the market. because stop loses starts working, panic seller starts to sell etc.

Too right, it works like snow, even the smallest flake can start a huge avalanche. If you can influence other peoples actions you can control the price for a far smaller amount than if you were trying to do it all of your own accord.

It's a good thing that whales can't tank the market.  That means it's here to stay.  Too many small investors now.

The theory that the whales can manipulate the market as they want is very interesting but no one has ever shown proof that is the case, and like always when people lose money or make a mistake in the market they are going to try to find someone to blame, and the whales are the perfect scapegoat, because they are rich and you can blame them for all your problems instead of taking the blame yourself.

Next time, the whales will begin to phase out the exchange rate on the cryptocurrency market, whereby the whole exchange rate of the cryptos will increase rapidly. I predict that in November the exchange rate of the whole market will rebound strongly back to the same time as the end of 2017.

It might be impossible to be like how it is last year, the decline of price is too high to reach what it reach last year. It tooks 3 to 4 months or more for the price to drop, the market may take more time. We just hope that it will increase as much as possible.

Yeah I don't think it is the whales that have the most influence I think the miners and the exchanges would have a lot of influence. 

Maybe you are forgetting that the liquidity in exchanges is not big enough and it is enough to affect the price generally when a whale kicks in and drive the market hard with a huge amount of their stash. What you do not also understand is that the price you are basically seeing in the market right now is the integration and representation of the average of all the exchanges put together.

Whales are in the market, and they can always tank the market when it is highly speculative actually, and the only thing that would make that impossible in the long run is when it becomes less speculative and then we get to start seeing real life usage.

It seems to me that banks have the main influence on the market, they just have a lot of wallets, which is difficult to determine who they belong to. Therefore, market manipulation is very difficult to predict, even if you follow the purses of whales.

6% or 4.6% is a large amount to change market movements (dump / pump)
Just imagine 6% of total bitcoin buying or selling will have a huge impact on the market, even though they cannot control the entire market, at least they get what they want.
for example now the price of bitcoin is stable at 6600 $ when they enter they can pump, maybe bitcoin easily returns to $ 20000 even though it won't last long, maybe only for 1 month or less.

Even bitcoin can still be manipulated by whales and it has not really passed the point completely, but for now actually, it is still something that is gradually dying off as the market keeps maturing and many other players are beginning to step into the market, which is why whales are really making the altcoins a target at the moment.

In the long run, I believe bitcoin will most definitely pass that stage when we start seeing the market big and a lot matured than now, but by then, I believe we would have stepped into the level of mainstream adoption and real life use to be able to see that become reality.

Honestly, the cryptocurrency market is not about what ones think or presume but what ones experienced and I want to reassure you that the whales did manipulate the price of the market base on past record and last year price record to be precise which lead to the market correction of this year.
Meanwhile, I don't believe what the article says because most of the writers are either cryptocurrency admirer or hater and most of them only want to make their blog/article popular or cause FUD.

first of all this is altcoin board not bitcoin. you should move this to an appropriate board.
secondly it has never been about how much of the supply you own. you may own a lot more than those percentages but still can't manipulate anything or you may own a lot less and manipulate a lot. it all depends on which market you are analyzing and since you posted this in altcoin board i give an example with altcoins.
there are altcoins with more than 100 billion supply but you can manipulate them with smaller than 1000 coins or a value equal to 0.1BTC or less. but in bitcoin market you wouldn't be able to do shit with 0.1BTC!

Whales have always been overrated but I would never underrate them as well, it is more than a reality that whales can really tank the market even today.

Some whales, some exchanges and paid medias are syndicate in price manipulation, they can tank the market anytime they wanted to. I don't believe easily in published articles by shiller medias. I only believe in my own theory and research, so for me its a hoax if they tell that they can't tank the markets.

this is a bit misleading, specially that title that OP chose.

what happens is that a whale CAN crash a market easily. for most markets it doesn't even take much to do it. they can easily crash them. but what comes next is the important defining factor that will determine the final price after the crash.

what comes next is the rest of the market. when something has real value like bitcoin for example, no matter how much you manipulate it and how much you dump and crash, that asset will continue having its underlying value.
it is like gold, if you dump it and crash it, at the end it is still gold and is useful. like bitcoin. in the end it is still the only decentralized currency that passed the test of time. so it has the demand and it will rise back up.

but when the asset has no value, when it is dumped there is no reason for anyone to buy it back. so when it crashes it won't ever  come back up again. hence creating the term pump and dump. that when an altcoin is pumped and dumped after the dump it dies unless they pump it again and eventually dies after a couple of p&d.

I am sure they will be back one day. They are in love with volatility and they will try to make more money. I think they will do their best to make BTC 50K

well I think its kinda real because the role of the whales that I have heard about here is too big it seems like something incredible.

I think the critical word here is "tank".  Tanking something is greater than something than dip, it means ruin.

Well, we were led into many hypes last year. In 2018, the word 'whale' in connection with cryptocurrency became so popular and whale was the easy scapegoat for anything happening in the market whether it was down or up. This year, we realized that all of those things are just overstated. And this is a good development as we should be shying away from any group or just a select few personalities controlling the whole market...the control should be spread or democratize with as many people as possible so there would be no unbalance of power. I am hoping that in 2019 we can see the many advantages of this fact.

Perhaps the role of the whales is too high, but for some reason everyone is waiting for their actions, which will be the catalyst for the general growth and arrival of the bulls. But there are also exchanges and large companies and simple investors. So this is a multi-component system.

whales will keep the coin, quietly eating small plankton and ride the wave. exchanges are the real villain here, they are the fishing boat taking everything with them, both big and small fish.

Okay lets face it there are some people that really has tonsnof money and yes it can affect the market, but it cannot be in total control to manipulate it. One of tye big factors here is the exchange that investors do and the news. Even if you put up a group of people to try to manipulate it it would still cost a lot of money.

It is not even news anymore, as this is a decentralized, non-regulated market, and even in regulated markets, the whales still try to do some things, but in a systematic way so they do not get seen as manipulating the market to their favor  and with the regulation not in place here, for the fact that the market is purely speculative and no real life usage yet, and the fact that every newbie coming in are just setting in as a result of greed and not because they see long term potentials, then, it makes it an easy environment for them to manipulate however they want.

Every year more and more people enter this market, and the number of bitcoins decreases as a result of which the whales lose their assets a little. On Earth, more than 7 billion people, even if 1% of people own Bitcoins, is a lot. I'm not surprised that whales are harder and harder.

i am not convinced that either regulations or the decentralization has anything to do with this. the whales exist in all the markets, even in the bigger ones. what do you think someone like Warren Buffet is if not a whale manipulating certain markets in his own will to make profit from them?
it is always about the power that someone has and how they can use that power effectively.

Interesting article. Truly, Bitcoin's market cap is high enough, to be hard to manipulate by whales. Not like smaller Altcoins, which can constantly be victims of pump and dumps. Anyways, a bit higher volume could be great, to feel even safer.

I wonder if Elliott Wave theorists are charting these rise and falls with their theories and if it makes any sense.

I agree on the point that whales and exchanges work together mutually to manipulate the price. I watched a video where was clearly explained on graphics on various top exchanges concerning recent Tether accident.

In my opinion there are several thoughts and approaches that can be made with this article or consider relative aspects such as trusts in the data exposed and real certainty that these 32 whales have this actual amount and with the possibility of owning other wallets. Regarding the article is attractive and interesting but the homework should be done when we know we should not believe in anyone but ourselves.  ;)

Articles didn't put too much effect now in crypto users since we all know that they can be paid and favored in only one side, though it can help to think whether they worth reading and worth believing.

Whales alone cant tank the market i definitely agree with that . but they can be one of the reason too , we have different factors how we end up here , first the newbies who have invested in late NOV , DEC , JANUARY when there is a ton of hype in cryptospace even CNBC news are telling people to buy their BITCOIN , XRP now that they are on a lost they are afraid to end up with nothing thus they are selling

They will always get what they want as long as the exchange market generally is nothing big yet and can easily be manipulated based on the volume on them, and we all know how speculative this market can be most of the time.

The whales can do whatever they want as long as that is in place, which is the main reason why the need for real life usage and adoption is the only thing that can save this market from such manipulations and I believe as the market gets more matured, a lot of things would most definitely change for the better part of things.

I have always been sceptical of Whales influence in the market of cryptocurrency.  The Bitcoin is decentralized and the majority of bitcoin supply is in the hand of majority who are not whales!