In that regard, the alleged manipulators might have to change sides when the BTC price starts moving against them in order to attempt to recuperate their losses in the opposite direction of their original intended manipulation, so would those kinds of behaviors and dynamics be fairly characterized as manipulation or just reasonable and expected dynamics of a relatively small free market?
Yes, they would have to, if these manipulators actually exist.
At least the appeal - or eventuality - that such exist and do successfully more or less willingly or unwillingly, significantly manipulate prices, the trust into bitcoin as an investment would likely decrease, mostly by (future) retail customers.
I am not sure whether we are arguing about semantics or merely just some amount of variation in regards to how we speculate about the manipulation going on or the possible impact of such purported manipulation.
There might be some BTC/market/price dynamics that we actually agree upon, and then there would be questions regarding how we might characterize those dynamics, and their effects on either the market or perceptions of the market.
Imo, it's a question of the viewpoint. We could call any buy/sell operation that ultimately has the goal to change market value, for the very own advantage, manipulation. Whereas (pure) market dynamics would be just mathematical outcome of the sum of all trading moves, over time.
Intention to impact the price, for whatever reason, would be clearly manipulation, from my point of view.
It seems to me that part of my problem with the term manipulation is when it seems to being used to ascribe a fairly narrow set of players or events and then to assert that BTC prices were moved because of those events, and in essence, I was kind of latching onto the correlation that you were attempting to assert in regards to the BAKKT trade volume going up and coinciding with downward BTC price movements - and thereafter suggesting that BAKKT players were causing the BTC's price to go down through their manipulations.
Shouldn't we already agree that there are going to be whale players who are going to want to manipulate bitcoin down as much as they can and for as long as they can, and they are going to use actual physical manipulations such as dumping coins, and if they can they are going to attempt to engage in dirty tactics such as fractional reserves and whatever they can to time their dumpenings and they are going to use information or misinformation campaigns in order to attempt to create negative impressions about bitcoin, but in the end, how far and for how long are they going to be able to be successful in keeping the BTC price down.
Not only for the purpose of keeping down, but to enrich themselves by triggering downtrends by hitting stop-loss-orders, breaking "support lines", to accumulate more coins at lower prices, to extend this dirty play, for whatever reason(s).
The projection would be: What if i am a whale and be evil, what would i do?
Yeah, but isn't there a kind of desire by all BIG players to want to be able to use their resources to make more money? Of course, if you are a kind of true believer in BTC, you might not want to take such risks that your manipulation attempts might end up ruining your investment, but true bear whales do not likely have any such attachment to BTC and/or they may even rationalize that they are providing a kind of service to the whole price finding mechanisms to push the price as far as they are able to do it.. and of course, bitcoin is much more of a wild wild west as compared with a lot of other markets, so the tools available and the limitations (to the extent that they exist) are going to cause a different weighing of how to attempt to play the market to your advantage if you have the means to do so and are willing to attempt to do it.
Those fucks tried and tried and tried to keep BTC prices below $500, but they lost control. Same is true at other BTC price points, so what makes you believe that they are going to be any more successful this time? Are they going to be able to get BTC prices to go below $3,122? The odds seem quite highly against them, so who the fuck cares if they are able to drag out this particular correction for months and months and months, because in the end, they are going to have to give in and allow or chase BTC's price up.
I don't believe that they are going to be more successful, but at least successful. I was raised to be good, not to be evil, annoying, selfish or whatever Karma wouldn't like. That's why i condemn any of the opposite.
Even the manipulators are not necessarily evil, and they likely have ways that they can rationalize away their behavior. You know that there are so many inexperienced people in the bitcoin and crypto space, and more experienced traders can recognize the trading in bitcoin to be part of the school of hard knocks, and if you get into the pool with sharks, you better bring the right equipment, otherwise you are going to get yourself into a world of pain.
By the way, I am not really suggesting that all whales are even engaging in legal or fair means, and there might be some whales that are able to work some of their inside positions to play in a way that might be illegal, if they were caught or even could cost them in large ways if they were caught, too.
Surely there is a lot of imperfect information too, and sure none of us really know how far the BTC price can be pushed in one direction or another and many of the smaller players are going to have fewer resources available to them to attempt to figure it out which way the BTC price is going to go. And, there may even be a decent number of BIG players who end up getting burned BIGGLY because they overplay their hand in one direction or another. So sometimes even if you are BIG, you might not consider it to be in your interest to attempt to play some avenues of possible "manipulation" because it might not work... then you are fucked with less value or sometimes even losing your whole stash because of overplaying your hand.
You're right. In the long run it doesn't make a difference to bitcoin at all, but there are victims, and i don't like that.
Yeah... in the longer run, bitcoin is going to do what it does, and sure it is possible that we are all on a kind of ride, and bitcoin is going to zero, but if we have been studying the space long enough, we are not so fooled by what seems to be quite an unlikely direction - but there are a large number of other people who are fooled by such proposition that bitcoin is going to zero and even place their bets on some variation of such, and end up getting screwed. Of course there are going to be winners and losers, and surely it can feel a bit painful if either you are the loser or you know people who end up losing or getting screwed, but there is frequently a lot of those kinds of injustices in the world, and it seems quite likely to me, that bitcoin is a whole hell of a lot more biased in favor of the little guy than a lot of other systems, but even the little guy has to somehow figure out to not attempt to engage in certain kinds of gambling strategies, and there are ways for the little guy to win the fuck out of this whole situation if s/he engages in decently prudent balancing including a lot of the basics that many of us here tend to preach such as: not gambling, dollar cost average buying, accumulating and HODLing, don't invest more than you can lose, get your finances and psychology in order, etc etc.
I have no doubts that there are BIG ASS players who can keep BTC's price down further and for longer than reasonable or rational, but they are also ONLY likely to be able to achieve their objectives for so long, and that is likely what happened in late 2015 when they could no longer keep BTC's price down. Same could happen this time. If they can get BTC's price to go below $3,122 then there are going to be a lot of jaded folks, but what the fuck are HODLers like us going to do at those price points? Hopefully we are buying rather than selling, but anyhow, let them manipulate and try to get the price to go down. That is what we expect them to attempt to do, but BTC prices are still way the fuck higher than they were a few years ago, and that is surely not because whale manipulators wanted BTC's prices to be in these current $8k-ish territories. If it was up to them, we would still be below $500.
In contrast, i mostly believe that they drag down overall market sentiments, watch prices go down and use their liquidated Fiat to rebuy at lower prices, to milk off some money and level up their dirty game over time.
I am not concluding that you are wrong with your various assessments, including the fact that many whales might go down a road of dirty that is much LARGER than you consider to be acceptable or relateable, but in the end, the world works like that, so the best that we can do as individuals is to attempt to prepare our own positions for various kinds of likely outcomes, even extreme outcomes that seem way beyond what is reasonably possible. So, yeah, you are correct that propaganda, misinformation is going to be coupled with dumping or whatever is possible to push the BTC price way further in a direction that us little fishes might consider to be outrageous, and we have to be prepared financially and psychologically for such extremes. It is possible that the four year fractal that many of us here are on and on about, ends up NOT playing out like we had thought that it would, and BTC prices end up going below $3,122, which could even bring such prices below $2k - and then a lot of us would become quite deflated by such an occurrence that does not seem to be very likely, but there are probably a decent number of large players, such as financial institutions and governments that would love to achieve such an outcome, but just because they want it, how likely is such a scenario, and should we be spending a lot of time on such a scenario when there are more likely and better scenarios that we should be preparing for (even though we should prepare for negative extremes, too).
So, yeah, a lot of us can become negative feeling, merely from the price where we are at right now, and we were contemplating that we would be in the 5 digits rather than 4 digits with several dweebs - people talking about $6,400 and lower, but bitcoin works like that. I mean it is decently possible that bear whales get us down to our most recent low of $7,293 and then all of a sudden an exchange is hacked or china bans bitcoin or some other nonsense, and we have been there before, but if you recognize the bullshit, you realize that you should be either buying or HODLing as a preferable practice, even though some of those scenarios could happen, they are far from guaranteed, and we could end up having another BTC price spurt upwards, right when you got greedy and sold some of your BTC stash in order to prepare for $6,400 that never even comes close to happening.
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