Will CME crypto product allow bitcoin manipulation?

[Don Pedro Dinero]

CME announcement that it will launch bitcoin futures have pushed bitcoin price even higher up. However, I’ve been researching the subject and I can see some people worried that instead of launching futures, what they are going to launch is a Contract for Difference, or CFD, which will allow to manipulate the price.

Some people say that bitcoin price is already a bit manipulated, by people “cooking” order books done by algorithms in trading blocks, taking place in exchanges:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/single-trader-with-enormous-bankroll-is-manipulating-bitcoin-price-but-to-what-end
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqyLByXUksg

What do you think?

1)   Is bitcoin price already manipulated to some extent?
2)   Will CME product allow them to manipulate the price?

[twobits]

I don't think so because the CME product will based on the prediction and there is no direct buy to the bitcoinmarket. i just like use the bitcoin price as the main pegged of the contract. and there will be no buy to buy into the bitcoin market. It will not give any manipulation to the bitcoin.

[Agamemnus]

Well anytime Wall Street gets there hands on something that is considered money by the masses there will eventually be someone that tries something greedy as that is what centralized organizations, or currencies, breed. Luckily, they won't be able to have any affect on the actual currency Bitcoin because no one controls it and thus it is completely decentralized.

[fiulpro]

1. Well I think the price of bitcoins isn't manipulated... To the extent that would be noticeable ... First of all manipulating such a large market will require a certain amount of power .. and that power is what its developers holds.. and.. They are the ones that want to make it really decentralized.. there are speculations about bitcoin price being manipulated by the non core team and stuff...but there is no evidence till now of it being really true.
2.No I don't think.. Anyone would allow CME to.
 Manipulate bitcoins even if they wanted to...
 And they don't hold necessary power to do this...

[filharvey]

Definitely,bitcoin price would get manipulated and its price would be speculated very high since it is cash settled and so,there is no need for seller to immediately deliver bitcoin.He has the time until expiration period which would allow many people to speculate bitcoin price.

Just the price would get manipulated as it occurred early in 1600 in tulip and speculators would play their game more freely.That's what some bitcoin enthusiasts are deeply concerned about while some of innocent bitcoin holders feel happy that it would help bitcoin go mainstream and bitcoin price would increase very high.

[Lompe]

I don't think so because the CME product will based on the prediction and there is no direct buy to the bitcoinmarket. i just like use the bitcoin price as the main pegged of the contract. and there will be no buy to buy into the bitcoin market. It will not give any manipulation to the bitcoin.

Yes, I think that too. That is a future what I have heard of, and thus they should not interact on Bitcoin.

But still, someone very wealthy could predict a price and put all his money to make it happen. Bt that can happens in any market.

[hase0278]

1)   Is bitcoin price already manipulated to some extent?

Price of bitcoin is already manipulated to some extent and you are right that some manipulates it via order book but they can only do it temporarily, they can't control it forever since their money supply to manipulate order book is finite.

2)   Will CME product allow them to manipulate the price?

Probably. It might also allow the creator to manipulate bitcoin prices as he wish it. Even if that is the case, they would still need the support of the users for it to be effective. If people wont use it then their contract is useless.

[Kingofbitcoin12345]

What do you think?

1)   Is bitcoin price already manipulated to some extent?

For some instances,, Yes.. Those bad news and rumours that are orchestrated and organized attack on bitcoin newbies investors that will result in panicking is not a coincidence because it is planned by some groups who want to buy at lower price but this could change as numbers of investors increases and bitcoin investors matured..

2)   Will CME product allow them to manipulate the price?

I don’t judge the book by its cover,, so for now I will wait for its full implementation and give a reaction after..

[kryptqnick]

I read the official CME news and I didn't really understand what exactly are they going to do. It looks like they want to make btc available for purchase and they will regulate the price of btc on their Mercantile Exchange via some contracts with people that they will agree to buy/sell btc at the agreed price on a certain day in the future. Is that true? If it is then it probably will slightly regulate btc price, but only on this exchange (though a very big one), not on others we are used to.
As for some Spoofy having so many btc that he/she/they can regulate btc price - this doesn't sound very realistic to me, I think these are simply speculations on this matter and currently btc is not regulated by anyone.

[bitjoin]

The gold market folks complain products like this hold the price of gold down but i reckon that just excuses and them pumping gold sales.  Maybe because gold isn't easy to transact p2p makes futures markets able to control gold prices, who knows.  Fact is this is good news for btc and good luck controlling the price i say.

[atc1-REAL]

There are definitely some sharks who will use this opportunity to play the market. Considering how CME is a mainstream institution, it will bring in a lot more people into the btc exchanges, people who will look at btc only as an investment and nothing else. If large sharks come into play, we can see the manipulation happen at larger levels and larger price ranges that we know. Its a silver lining, because while more people will enter the btc market, they dont all care about its potential as a currency or its underlying technology.

[JMAHH]

Everytime that there is an opportunity to manipulate the price, all those whales who are dissesperated of moving the price will obviously try to manipulate it, and there is no doubt with it at all, so it does not impress me. But have you ever noticed that those who are always changing the price are those who have the control over a lot of financial instruments? like Jamie Dimon, warren buffet, jordan belfort, and the list is long..

[Hydrogen]

I'm not an expert on this topic. My thoughts are, if some exchanges were manipulating buy/sell orders to push btc higher. There would be a bigger average difference in btc prices across exchanges. Exchanges who engage in market manipulation might sell btc for $7800, while exchanges who do not engage in manipulation might have a far lower btc price of $7200. That's one potential outcome and indicator we might expect if algorithmic book cooking was implemented on some exchanges.

The media is putting a lot of effort into developing new angles to criticize crypto. I think if there were real substance to this story, we would see clips on youtube of it occurring in real time. Traders on exchanges would try to sell btc for lower prices and (in theory) the algorithmic manipulation part of things would kick in and prevent the trade from happening to keep btc's price high.

The story of market manipulation is probably part of the unified front against bitcoin maintained by the media. It doesn't have to be true, it only has to sound reasonable enough that some will believe it.

[fxstrike]

Gold and Silver should correlated with BTC but so far the correlation is very low because Gold and Silver is heavily manipulated, this big exchanges offering BTC futures  could also affect BTC price

[Razick]

There are definitely some sharks who will use this opportunity to play the market. Considering how CME is a mainstream institution, it will bring in a lot more people into the btc exchanges, people who will look at btc only as an investment and nothing else. If large sharks come into play, we can see the manipulation happen at larger levels and larger price ranges that we know. Its a silver lining, because while more people will enter the btc market, they dont all care about its potential as a currency or its underlying technology.

Don't forget though, as the market cap of Bitcoin rises, individual corporations and people have less and less of an impact on the global price. What we are witnessing now is legitimate proof of how small Bitcoin still is. I mean the market cap is barely worth more than the richest guy on the planet. That just goes to show how much there is to improve.

[BillCoin]

They won't make a price manipulation through the CME Future contracts, but I do believe that they are going to manipulate the price through the big exchanges.

Whales can buy future contracts at CME, and then manipulate the price with setting up huge support levels at the big exchanges, so they won't have a chance of losing funds(Unless a bigger whale decides that he wants the price to go to the opposite direction).