Why Bitcoin Might Be Resilient to Price Manipilulation By Futures

[bubble1]

Futures trading of Bitcoin by CME is planned to start soon - see this link https://www.coindesk.com/cme-group-plans-launch-bitcoin-futures-contract/

This potentially risks the same sort of manipulation that exists in the Gold/Silver market, where the price is heavily suppressed, and bullion banks play wash and rinse https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/washtrading.asp. Although this is illegal, it's condoned by Central Banks, and executed with impunity in the precious metals arena, especially gold and silver.

Could the same happen with Bitcoin, where huge futures contracts might be used to force the price (down usually)? Can Central Banks use it as a weapon?

I think the risk is lower with Bitcoin, for one simple reason: gold (contracts and bullion) is only traded on 3 exchanges - Comex (US), LBMA (UK) and Shanghai (China). Only banks, hedge funds and corporates can trade on these exchanges because the minimum contract values are so high.

However, today there are 121 crypto exchanges https://cryptocoincharts.info/markets/info, with more coming on stream as Bitcoin popularity continues to grow. Plus, there are many other informal market places where buyers can meet sellers, for example eBay.

Anyone wanting to trade real Bitcoins can buy or sell any amount from 1 Satoshi to 1000 Bitcoin without reference to CME or other futures exchanges. Trading is perfectly possible, anywhere in the world, at the peer-to-peer level, without the need for centralised or other exchanges.

My hope is that the price of real Bitcoins will be a true price, determined by price discovery.

Perhaps other forum members, better informed than I am, can comment on whether my hypothesis is too optimistic.
 

[Xavofat]

Only banks, hedge funds and corporates can trade on these exchanges because the minimum contract values are so high.

Most importantly, gold is physically difficult to trade because gold is:

-Not as easy to transport as BTC
-Not at all uniform (one piece of gold is not always equal to another piece of gold, even if they are the same weight).

Price manipulation may still happen (and arguably happens already) but it will be alongside a large amount of legitimate trading as well.

[949miner]

It has already been discused in here and we all have been thinking about the same, the whole SEC and a lot of other economic inst, like banks, or governments are going to be able to manipulate the price easily if they are going to enable bitcoin as an ETF, it is insane, but it could be good for us, if they are going to make it look like an ETF then it means that they want to pump it hard, so i dont think that it is something that we should be worrying about.
So be quiet people, this all thing will be solved once that it happens.