Is this theoretically possible?

[Jamzymc]

Say a group of rich investors got together and intending to buy huge amounts of bitcoin with the intention to one day crash the market. Say they told other investors of their plan deception and they bought into the idea. They done this for a while making the price of bitcoin soar. If they all collectively cashed in on their bitcoins and told people/ warned people and fooled them into doing the same via news articles, websites and other forms of mainstream exposure. Could they theoretically cause enough of a collapse to then buy the bitcoins back at a low price and wait for it to boom again makinf a huge profit or am I totally missing the point?

[FlamingFingers]

Theoretically and practically. What do you think makes bitcoin crash after a big pump? Whales and large-volume investors selling Bitcoins, cashing out, getting huge profits, and buying it again cheaper. Just imagine this scenario on a big scale, and you will find it possible enough.

[franky1]

yep any bitcoin price dump should be thought of as discount day.

as long as bitcoin has the largest 'merchant accepts..' utility then bitcoin will remain better than most others.

however if this same cartel bought out the main merchant tools like bitpay/coinbase** and then got those services to start only letting merchants only accept, lets say litecoin.. then this could cause more long term issues for bitcoin

so as long as bitcoin keeps its majority UTILITY.. any price changes are just discount(down) profit(up) days


**http://dcg.co/portfolio/

[Nagadota]

Anyone could do this with any stock, asset or literally anything else.  It's called a "pump and dump", and it's shockingly common.

However, Bitcoin's 24 hour volume is now over 1.5 billion dollars.  It would take many millions of dollars to buy enough Bitcoin for this to be a serious event.

Manipulation is frequent with anything, but typically whales go for altcoins since the liquidity is lower and it's much easier to manipulate users.

[foxbat]

Say a group of rich investors got together and intending to buy huge amounts of bitcoin with the intention to one day crash the market. Say they told other investors of their plan deception and they bought into the idea. They done this for a while making the price of bitcoin soar. If they all collectively cashed in on their bitcoins and told people/ warned people and fooled them into doing the same via news articles, websites and other forms of mainstream exposure. Could they theoretically cause enough of a collapse to then buy the bitcoins back at a low price and wait for it to boom again makinf a huge profit or am I totally missing the point?

When we talk about teamwork, it is clear that people who have experience working together will have good results. This encourages everyone to work together. However, the market is large, and it is constantly moving in different directions, so it is impossible to control and dominate the market, regardless of teamwork.

[RodeoX]

I know a lot of people think "whales" do this. But I am not at all convinced. I have met with many of the largest traders and I assure you they do not do foolish things like this. Wealthy people did not get their money by buying low and selling high. There would be a slim chance that the price would fall low enough for enough time to buy back. The far more likely outcome would result in a loss.

Now why on Earth would I take that risk? Especially with an asset that is growing hundreds of percentage points per year. It is not logical and pros ONLY act logically.

[bitcoindusts]

It is possible and it is happening right now.  There is somehow some dump probably a successful ICO that is recently finished and now cashing out their collected Bitcoin.  Or a whale that want to play with market and give FUD so that price will decrease more.

[RodeoX]

It is possible and it is happening right now.  There is somehow some dump probably a successful ICO that is recently finished and now cashing out their collected Bitcoin.  Or a whale that want to play with market and give FUD so that price will decrease more.

How? Does this whale have every currency in the world? The price is dropping everywhere. And the FUD needs to be in every language. How will they do that?
What you are suggesting is that someone is selling massive amounts of coins at a loss, spending a fortune on translators and trading surrogates at exchanges all over the world. And the payoff is a very slight chance of profits for a few hours at the most. Does not compute.

[FlamingFingers]

I know a lot of people think "whales" do this. But I am not at all convinced. I have met with many of the largest traders and I assure you they do not do foolish things like this. Wealthy people did not get their money by buying low and selling high. There would be a slim chance that the price would fall low enough for enough time to buy back. The far more likely outcome would result in a loss.

Now why on Earth would I take that risk? Especially with an asset that is growing hundreds of percentage points per year. It is not logical and pros ONLY act logically.

Why isn't 'selling high, buying low' logical? I mean, let's assume a guy (might not be considered a whale) who had 100BTC, and kept doing that method till he got 1000BTC. Why would anyone sit on a sum of bitcoins doing nothing, while they can double it easily like that. Heck, the 2013 bubble was great time for such method.

[BrewMaster]

It is possible and it is happening right now.  There is somehow some dump probably a successful ICO that is recently finished and now cashing out their collected Bitcoin.  Or a whale that want to play with market and give FUD so that price will decrease more.

How? Does this whale have every currency in the world? The price is dropping everywhere. And the FUD needs to be in every language. How will they do that?
What you are suggesting is that someone is selling massive amounts of coins at a loss, spending a fortune on translators and trading surrogates at exchanges all over the world. And the payoff is a very slight chance of profits for a few hours at the most. Does not compute.

a whale is just someone with a larger amount of funds who acts faster/first because they expect a move in a certain direction.
it can be expectation of a drop because ETF was rejected, BU is threatening split, Mike Hearn says bitcoin is dead, or bitfinex gets hacked.
or it can be expectation of rise because ETF is being considered, halvening is happening, Japan said we adopt bitcoin,...

then this move starts the ripple effect, bots are alerted, the watchers start sending signals and the first wave join in and do the same and that move becomes bigger.

then the sheep come in. here you don't really need to translate that news (FUD or whatever) they will find it on their own and do the rest. they visit reddit, bitcointalk, or their favorite twitter bullshitter and find out what is going on and run scared to exchanges to jump in the river and follow the current.
this is incidentally the same time those "whales" are starting to do the exact opposite of what they did in the beginning.

this is my observation of what people call "whales manipulating" bitcoin.

[FlamingFingers]

How? Does this whale have every currency in the world? The price is dropping everywhere. And the FUD needs to be in every language. How will they do that?
What you are suggesting is that someone is selling massive amounts of coins at a loss, spending a fortune on translators and trading surrogates at exchanges all over the world. And the payoff is a very slight chance of profits for a few hours at the most. Does not compute.

OK. You got a point there. But a whale might not need all of that. If the 'whale(s)' has funds on the most largest BTC/USD exchanges only, and started selling his BTC stack bit by bit, he could initiate the panic sell, if timed properly, leading the price to crash.

[freeyourmind]

I know a lot of people think "whales" do this. But I am not at all convinced. I have met with many of the largest traders and I assure you they do not do foolish things like this. Wealthy people did not get their money by buying low and selling high. There would be a slim chance that the price would fall low enough for enough time to buy back. The far more likely outcome would result in a loss.

Now why on Earth would I take that risk? Especially with an asset that is growing hundreds of percentage points per year. It is not logical and pros ONLY act logically.

Not sure whether or not this happens, aside from hearing about people speaking of the trading behaviour of "whales", but not the whales themselves.

This is the only way I could see this working.  If there is a mass selloff, which creates fear and a downward momentum in the general market, which would need to continue for awhile after the "whales" were done selling.  Followed by buying and the confidence would return in the general market bidding the price back up.

For whales, I'd think the smarter play is to create exchanges and make a spread, play arbitrage opportunities to get the market efficient.

[joshy23]

Well its theoretically possible, but unlikely to be accomplished by the group of whalers you have described. I mean what benefits them for crashing the bitcoin market? I think this super rich will not go far to this action just to disrupt the market and be happy seeing the price plummet to the floor and then buy again? I seriously doubt it will happen. Sorry.

[The_Dark_Knight]

Say a group of rich investors got together and intending to buy huge amounts of bitcoin with the intention to one day crash the market. Say they told other investors of their plan deception and they bought into the idea. They done this for a while making the price of bitcoin soar. If they all collectively cashed in on their bitcoins and told people/ warned people and fooled them into doing the same via news articles, websites and other forms of mainstream exposure. Could they theoretically cause enough of a collapse to then buy the bitcoins back at a low price and wait for it to boom again makinf a huge profit or am I totally missing the point?

It is possible but there are two dangerous aspects of that operation, the first one is, how to cash out get profits but at the same time not crash the price while they are cashing out? And the second and most important  what if some other bigger whales are doing the same? How do they avoid getting trapped in someone else move.

[elite3000]

Yes, but rich people usually think is terms of getting advantages and earning money.

They would lose money and time with this plane.

Why would they do it?

[Heartilly]

Say a group of rich investors got together and intending to buy huge amounts of bitcoin with the intention to one day crash the market. Say they told other investors of their plan deception and they bought into the idea. They done this for a while making the price of bitcoin soar. If they all collectively cashed in on their bitcoins and told people/ warned people and fooled them into doing the same via news articles, websites and other forms of mainstream exposure. Could they theoretically cause enough of a collapse to then buy the bitcoins back at a low price and wait for it to boom again makinf a huge profit or am I totally missing the point?

They can move the market but I think not that much because they aren't the only one now who is considered as whales.

If that plan is formed when bitcoin adoption is still not noticeable then maybe they can manipulate the market. But today, with lots of distributed coins from different person, the term market manipulation is slowly not fit to the movement of bitcoin price now. What those whales can do now is to try to make a panic like pumping or dumping big numbers of USD/bitcoin and see if the community will follow. If only numbers follow, then the attempt is failed.

[hase0278]

Say a group of rich investors got together and intending to buy huge amounts of bitcoin with the intention to one day crash the market. Say they told other investors of their plan deception and they bought into the idea. They done this for a while making the price of bitcoin soar. If they all collectively cashed in on their bitcoins and told people/ warned people and fooled them into doing the same via news articles, websites and other forms of mainstream exposure. Could they theoretically cause enough of a collapse to then buy the bitcoins back at a low price and wait for it to boom again makinf a huge profit or am I totally missing the point?

Theoretically it is very possible that a group of investors will get together to manipulate bitcoin price. Maybe they have done it before but the public does not know about it. They can also cause enough dump for them to rebuy cheaper to wait for price to boom again. A good example for this is the price movements before and after mt. Gox's fall because it is very possible that the owner of mt. Gox that time is involved in price manipulation of a group of whales.

[RodeoX]

I know a lot of people think "whales" do this. But I am not at all convinced. I have met with many of the largest traders and I assure you they do not do foolish things like this. Wealthy people did not get their money by buying low and selling high. There would be a slim chance that the price would fall low enough for enough time to buy back. The far more likely outcome would result in a loss.

Now why on Earth would I take that risk? Especially with an asset that is growing hundreds of percentage points per year. It is not logical and pros ONLY act logically.

Why isn't 'selling high, buying low' logical? I mean, let's assume a guy (might not be considered a whale) who had 100BTC, and kept doing that method till he got 1000BTC. Why would anyone sit on a sum of bitcoins doing nothing, while they can double it easily like that. Heck, the 2013 bubble was great time for such method.

Oh $h!+, I said it backwards. lol I meant buy high sell low.

[jc89]

Your theory about price manipulation is somewhat possible and at some point, it is what is happening. The exact scenario might be a little different but somewhat similar. Hoarders of bitcoins or whales might have been doing your theory years ago or they are doing it now, who knows right? With a pile of coins in their possession, it is highly possible that some are causing a crash on bitcoin's price that triggers panic selling. They sell at a high price and buy again at a low price.

[DIYOR]

Just remember this: if world banks wont be happy with all these cryptos, they can print infinite amount of fiat enough to overbuy all market and dump it to the ground. Like 100 bln is just joke for now. There are people who have more money out there, not even banks. So, I am trying to assume anything for sure, but just some quick thoughts