Are bitcoin whales complete morons?

[exstasie]

Hi

I saw todays dip and then read that a whale von Bitstamp sold about 3600 coins at once and tanked the price down to 6200 for a short period of time. Now it stabilized at around 7200 USD.

Why do these people do this? Are they just morons?

If they would sell their coins within a period of 3-4 days they could probably get close to 8000 USD for every single BTC ...

I think it's one of two things.

Either they saw the price dripping and panic sold into a thin book, or they thought they could actually dump prices into the $6,000s and that would spiral into a bigger crash.

Either way, it looks to me like we're going to stabilize off the $7,000 level and continue upwards.

[andreibi]

It is intentional. It is to drive panic. They know how deep the order books are in each exchanges. They know how ripe the bitcoin price is for a correction (stochastic indicators and others). They will short sell of course and then buy cheaper. Markets are just like that.

[dothebeats]

The recent dump back to $6000 is a definite example that some of them are indeed morons, or perhaps it's just some sort of error on the side of the whales. We will never know the reason why would someone dump that big on a single exchange. It could very well be one shakeout/bull trap and some people may have taken the bait as was evidenced by the volumes of sell orders on different exchanges during the same time. At this point, the momentum for the bulls is still strong and we can still afford a lot of 'mistakes' from whales (hopefully).

[WinslowIII]

Maybe it was the mystery buyer with $100m around $5k price cashing out? talk about a huge quick profit if it was...

[sheenshane]

Why would you ask if the whales are morons? As a matter of fact, they will not be able to reach their status today if they are morons.
And usually, those who question them are the people we must ask, what have you proven to consider yourself as an intelligent person?
I did not mean to offend. But the question is rude. This is not even an opinion.

If you have a question with their actions, then you must find an answer yourself why are they doing what they do today. I have this analogy
and I could use the movie Avengers: Endgame.  Avengers did not go back from the time where Thanos was only a baby and killed him? Are they dumb?

People who think about a single possibility is the true idiot. A person who knows 5 steps away from the first possibility will have the chance to play stupid and fool people.

[exstasie]

Why would you ask if the whales are morons? As a matter of fact, they will not be able to reach their status today if they are morons.

That's not really true. I've seen countless whales market dump and fail miserably to push prices down, situations where they'll never be able to rebuy their coins at the same prices again. They're losing their status as whales and distributing their coins to smaller fish.

Just look at the Bitstamp whale from yesterday. He dumped down to the low $6,000s but the price basically never returned below $7K after that. If we continue up from here, it's obvious that whale royally screwed himself, whether out of panic or some misguided idea that he could dictate the market.

Smart whales scale in and out with algos like TWAP and VWAP. Only dumb whales (soon to be broke non-whales) who think they can push the market around announce their presence and market sell loads of coins at spot. This is like 2012 MT Gox level stupidity.

[yohananaomi]

There could be things behind that that we might not know but it is clear that when viewed from trade it is stupid and seems panic. but let it go at least make bitcoin more stable and that is the hope of many people.

[Lucius]

~snip~

Why do you think someone is a moron because he made big profits? For some people bitcoin is just money machine, nothing more than that. If you read my post (number 7), you can see an example how to get profit in fiat, and to get bitcoin back. Selling everything on one exchange had its purpose, and that is to bring down the price as low as possible - they buy back those coins, and price is quickly recovered.

After all, everything comes down to how much money is in the game, $100 million can pump price $1000 in one hour, and 5000 BTC dump can do the same thing, only in the opposite direction.

[Reid]

Its their coin. They own it so they could sell it anytime they want to.

They aint morons. They have their own strategies doing that. If they fail then so what. But do you know who bought all that bitcoins to pump it again. It could be them too. Playing with the price just so they could profit easily.

They know bitcoin owners are weak right now because of the pumps that had been happening. It could be a good strategy to make them panic.

[Juggy777]

Hi

I saw todays dip and then read that a whale von Bitstamp sold about 3600 coins at once and tanked the price down to 6200 for a short period of time. Now it stabilized at around 7200 USD.

Why do these people do this? Are they just morons?

If they would sell their coins within a period of 3-4 days they could probably get close to 8000 USD for every single BTC ...

No they’re not morons they’re smart traders who know how to manipulate the market to make profits for themselves. In this scenario let’s assume he brought bitcoins at $3100 levels, and sold them at $7.5k levels now do the math and see for yourself the profits he got. It’s pertinent to note that no one can know for certain whether bitcoin prices will rise or take a dump, hence he’s justified in making that trade.

[CryptoNurse]

I doubt they are morons, since they are the ones making the money and controlling the market.

[CryptoBry]

it is very difficult to understand how the brain of certain people work, maybe that person had bought when the price was $ 3100 and realized that he had already made a lot of profit and decided to sell. That's why we need to have a big market that is very strong, so things like these will do not happen

His action bought the bitcoin into its correction right now. Now, since he sold his bitcoin at around $8,000 he can gain good profit if afterwards he bought the same bitcoin at $7,000. This is just actually a strategy in trading and I am sure that guy is right now smiling because he made a good amount of money in such a short period of time. And with that kind of move, let's not label him (assuming he is a guy) really as a moron though what he did affected us all in one way or another in the cryptocurrency industry.

[jakelyson]

Hi

I saw todays dip and then read that a whale von Bitstamp sold about 3600 coins at once and tanked the price down to 6200 for a short period of time. Now it stabilized at around 7200 USD.

Why do these people do this? Are they just morons?

If they would sell their coins within a period of 3-4 days they could probably get close to 8000 USD for every single BTC ...

The morons are those who bought when bitcoin pumped and sold after the whales dumped on them. It might even be that it is them that initiated the current bull run. You can't call them moron, they are geniuses.

[Kevin77]

Maybe that wasn't a "whale" ? I mean I know we call everyone who has a lot of money a whale these days but in real world people call rich people who usually keep making a lot of money whales. So for example, in casino world, if someone comes into your casino and plays 10 million dollar bet that night and leaves and comes back next month to do the same all because they are just having fun there that means they are literally whales, they don't care about that money.

Now this person who did all the selling and dropping the price could be an early bird, does he have a lot of money? Sure, does that mean he is a whale? Not in the sense I just talked about, that person is rich but he just got lucky, he is not like wall street CEO rich who keeps getting millions of dollars no matter what.

[Whaleagent]

Hi

I saw todays dip and then read that a whale von Bitstamp sold about 3600 coins at once and tanked the price down to 6200 for a short period of time. Now it stabilized at around 7200 USD.

Why do these people do this? Are they just morons?

If they would sell their coins within a period of 3-4 days they could probably get close to 8000 USD for every single BTC ...

They could sell all their bitcoins at 8000 USD without moving the market, even in 2 days if they wanted, however it is far more profitable to sell most of it at 7500-8000$ and wait for the price to tank further, without them spending more bitcoins and re-buying at 6200$ pumping the market right back up, almost instantly getting 15% returns, they also know the market is bullish right now and will very likely just climb back up to 8000 and beyond so they are just accumulating more bitcoin ''for free''

[tomahawk9]

Why do these people do this? Are they just morons?

LOL wish I were such a moron whale holding 5-digits worth of BTC that allow me to manipulate the price at my will 

Why do you think they do this? Because it's fun causing a flash crash? The whale who did that probably decided to cash out massive profits before it's too late, some people set exit-points at certain prices, it's called having an strategy in a highly volatile market, that whale probably had one at +8k, nothing moronic about that.

[wheelz1200]

Maybe that wasn't a "whale" ? I mean I know we call everyone who has a lot of money a whale these days but in real world people call rich people who usually keep making a lot of money whales. So for example, in casino world, if someone comes into your casino and plays 10 million dollar bet that night and leaves and comes back next month to do the same all because they are just having fun there that means they are literally whales, they don't care about that money.

Now this person who did all the selling and dropping the price could be an early bird, does he have a lot of money? Sure, does that mean he is a whale? Not in the sense I just talked about, that person is rich but he just got lucky, he is not like wall street CEO rich who keeps getting millions of dollars no matter what.

A whale just refers specifically to the amount of bitcoin they own.  Some are smart and shrewd some are dumb and lucky but either way they are whales

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bitcoin-whale.asp

[adaseb]

It doesn't make sense to dump all those coins at once, especially on a very illiquid exchange like Bitstamp. They basically put in the best offer and kept changing the price as it went down, creating algo bots to sell on other exchanges which do arbitrage.

Most likely it was manipulation to liquidate the $200 million longs on Bitmex which seems a common thing to do because people usually over-leverage on that exchange.

They did an investigation and said that nothing deliberate was found however I don't belive its the entire story.

[Thanasis]

Hi

I saw todays dip and then read that a whale von Bitstamp sold about 3600 coins at once and tanked the price down to 6200 for a short period of time. Now it stabilized at around 7200 USD.

Why do these people do this? Are they just morons?

If they would sell their coins within a period of 3-4 days they could probably get close to 8000 USD for every single BTC ...

Why they do? Because they want more money even if they have huge amount of money which is enough to manipulate trillions market cap coins.

They can bring down the price for a while but when others reacting to it then that is their real success so they bag huge profits by buying them at low price.

[pooya87]

I saw todays dip and then read that a whale von Bitstamp sold about 3600 coins at once and tanked the price down to 6200 for a short period of time.

i don't trust things i "read online" and neither should you. for example in this case was it really one whale selling 3600 bitcoin or was it 3600 bitcoin sold in that period by traders tanking the price? there is a big difference here. looking at the charts it is a sharp drop but if you zoom in to minute intervals you can see that it is traders panic selling which is a normal thing specially when they are using bots with stop loss orders and watchers to execute them so when a drop happens below their threshold their bot kicks in and starts selling so the big drop shapes up sharp like this.

this was a manipulation though because it started by a whale(s?) selling down to that threshold to trigger the sharp drop so that their shorts could be filled. but the size was nowhere near 3600BTC from what i can see.