Bitcoin is currently trading below $10,000. Why?

[leader2704]

The recent decline of Bitcoin to below 10k is thought to have an impact from China's Plus token scam, which has been discovered by police. One member of the scam group has been arrested, while others have running to Vanuatu. This scam is arguably the biggest fraud in the cryptocurrency market, the biggest ever since it is related to e-wallets, many investors have believed this is a safe wallet so they have put their Bitcoin on it to store, and also enjoy interest, so they became more excited. There are more than 200k BTC, 800k ETH and 26 million EOS, totaling 3 billion USD. According to the latest report, some of the coins are still in the wallets of scammers, which are being monitored by the company named Peckshield. Peckshield reported that recently they have moved in small batches of about 50-150 btc each time to exchanges such as Binance, Huobi, Bittrex to cash out. some disclosed by traders said someone has traded 100 BTC continuously for 5 days on binance before the BTC collapsed, could you remember the order with more than 7k BTC on Binance on July 9? It is most likely that from those scammers, after this price collapse, the news of Plus Token has been spread across social networks and newspaper sites, so many traders of the exchanges have more cautiously, they began tracking wallets from Plus Token to block BTC from scammers if transferred to them. Traders trading OTC in China via Okex exchanges and Huobi was also more cautious in these days because if they deal with scammers and are related to them, they will be blocked from the account, which has helped the BTC price temporarily prevent from more dump, anyway In addition, the current exchanges should strongly monitor this BTC to avoid fluctuation affecting the value of the entire market , especially large exchanges such as Binance, Huobi, Okex.

[Findingnemo]

When this scam happened? I see the price declining or more than a week now so the dump is related o the scam you are talking about?

Anyway 3 billion USD is really a huge amount which can trigger the manipulation if scammers cashout all the funds.

[joelsamuya]

The news on Plus Token ponzi scam which is really so huge and involving millions of people are now picked up by the press and has been the one blamed by many for the current downturn of Bitcoin as the wallets are now dumping into the market for both Bitcoin and Eth. I am sad for the people who are victims of this big mess but this is not the only one as there are also similar programs still existing in the market today and they too attracted massive number of members...they can be candidate for busting too. It is quite ingesting how scams can be affecting the price of cryptocurrencies and another interesting thing is that nobody can do something about the digital assets being laundered.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

The recent decline of Bitcoin to below 10k is thought to have an impact from China's Plus token scam, which has been discovered by police.

OP, you might want to practice formatting your posts so they don't look like a gigantic wall of text--it's very hard to read for a lot of people.

In any case, I highly doubt this little dip that bitcoin had has anything to do with a token scam.  There have been much worse events involving bitcoin, and it almost seems immune to criminal activities, exchanges going bust, or anything else.  If anyone really needs an explanation as to why bitcoin dropped below $10k, I would suggest that a lot of traders made good money when it hit $13k (or whatever the recent high was) and decided to sell.  Bitcoin is all about the buying/selling market forces, so there's obviously been more sellers than buyers lately.

In other words, no big deal.

[mk4]

This alleged "dumping of coins of a Chinese ponzi scheme" hasn't been confirmed as far as I know. I haven't checked, but I've read somewhere that the woman[1] that posted about this scam on Twitter, is also the same person that spread the FUD in the past when the markets went full bearish. The photo about miners being dumped in the trash; whereas the miners are actually being thrown because of it getting flooded and NOT because of the bear market.

I'm not saying this is 100% fake, I'm just saying that we should be cautious about this and not automatically believe it.

[1] https://twitter.com/DoveyWan/status/1161686134314848256

[SquallLeonhart]

I think the biggest reason is that 10k looks like a very clean number and everyone cares about that, whenever it goes beyond that people start to sell and whenever it goes below that people start to buy, hence it creates a constant movement between above 10 and under 10 and it just can't move anything further from it.

At one point we were as low as 3 thousand dollars and at highest we have reached 14 thousand dollars but they were just too radical, nowadays I think we need something major to change the price of bitcoin, otherwise people with their psychological "above 10 or under 10" methods they will keep it go above and below constantly without a change. I don't know the ways to change it but I know as long as nobody changes it then we will continue this way for a long time.

[omonuyak]

When this scam happened? I see the price declining or more than a week now so the dump is related o the scam you are talking about?

Anyway 3 billion USD is really a huge amount which can trigger the manipulation if scammers cashout all the funds.

If you analyze the trading volume you will find out that it seems investors are been careful not to put huge amount of money into the cryptocurrency market especially buying huge amount of bitcoin and only day traders are the one buying and selling. I agree with op that this bad scamming activity is actually and really affecting the markets and some traders are dumping out of fear that those bitcoin and others coins in the hands of the fraudstars may been dump over night and pull the price down more.

[exstasie]

When this scam happened? I see the price declining or more than a week now so the dump is related o the scam you are talking about?

It looks like the exit scam occurred on June 27th: https://cryptoslate.com/alleged-bitcoin-ponzi-scheme-plus-token-could-be-liquidating-billions-of-dollars-in-stolen-crypto-says-vc/

People keep repeating the same rumors about these batches of coins being sent to exchanges but no one has shown any proof. The reports (and underlying data) from Peckshield don't seem to be public, so nobody can confirm their claims. If Peckshield is legitimate, they're probably working with exchanges to freeze the funds.

[STT]

To give you a chance to buy, rejoice free markets contain opportunities for the many not just the privileged few.   Dont take a price as a negative any more then you would take a low price in a super market as somehow bad.

The product is the same, thats the part that really matters mostly.   Various news comes along but focus on the BTC protocol itself is my main concern.    Today people feel like they want to sell, on another day they feel they want to buy more.  One is the mirror of the other to some extent.

[Slow death]

The recent decline of Bitcoin to below 10k is thought to have an impact from China's Plus token scam, which has been discovered by police. One member of the scam group has been arrested, while others have running to Vanuatu.

The price is already above $10.000



and about "Plus token scam"... this news:

Researchers: Bitcoin Price Drop Not Caused by $3B Ponzi BTC Dump

explains that PlusToken was not responsible for the dump

Why is it that there are so many scam project emanating from China?

many scam projects are not created by chinese, but this is another conversation that would only bring problems if we commented here

[thecodebear]

Bitcoin is around $10k just because it is still correcting from that huge move from 7000s to 13000s.

This is actually great as just yesterday when it dipped back to mid-9000s it hit its 100-day Moving Average for the first time this bull market. Thats a great sign.

Last bull market basically every correction the price would drop back to its 100 day moving average, sometimes just hitting it and bouncing off of it, and sometimes going along with it for a little bit before going back above. But that always served as support for the bull market. We're 4.5 months into this bull market and it just hit this technical support for the first time, which basically means the price had gotten ahead of itself during those first few months of this bull market as people got all excited, but now it is finally back to the support line which means it is getting ready to move up again and the price is no longer ahead of itself.

It is important for a healthy bull market (aka long lasting) for the price to come back to that major support line to check back in with reality every once in a while. That means the bull market is looking real healthy and the price can start heading back up with fear that things are too overbought (until of course they do become too overbought again, at which point it will be time for the price to head back to this support line).

[thecodebear]

I think the biggest reason is that 10k looks like a very clean number and everyone cares about that, whenever it goes beyond that people start to sell and whenever it goes below that people start to buy, hence it creates a constant movement between above 10 and under 10 and it just can't move anything further from it.

At one point we were as low as 3 thousand dollars and at highest we have reached 14 thousand dollars but they were just too radical, nowadays I think we need something major to change the price of bitcoin, otherwise people with their psychological "above 10 or under 10" methods they will keep it go above and below constantly without a change. I don't know the ways to change it but I know as long as nobody changes it then we will continue this way for a long time.

nah, it'll probably leave 10 behind for good very soon. Its just still getting finished correcting from the last big push upwards. The market went up wayyy too fast from 3k's to 13k's, look at the charts it looked real unhealthy (too parabolic). Now after two months of correcting the upwards chart looks much healthier for the next step up.

September and october I think will probably see it go to like $18k or so and then correct back to like $13k to close out the year. That'd be my guess. August or september will likely be the last time we see 4-digits/10k prices. The bull market trend is still on it just came back to support levels which happens to be just under $10k right now, a month from now support will be over 10k and 10k will probably be gone forever.

[freedomgo]

This doesn't affect bitcoin, maybe the FUD made bitcoin dump below $10,000 but it's a good day for us because we are back to $10,000 and it seems bitcoin is more bullish now. Though it's painful to see that most of the coins in the market are red while bitcoin is gaining today, this is still good as this proves how strong bitcoin is, no room for panic this year as we are definitely set for recovery.

Eventually people will forget this news, and these scammers can dump freely but they can't do it instantly.

[adaseb]

The sell off a couple days ago was pretty intense and it basically reminded me of the Bitconnect ponzi which put us in the nasty 2018 bear market. I remember that Bitcoin peaked at $20K and then later the Ponzi was revealed and all the markets have started to crash and even till this day haven't recovered.

From what I heard, most of the investors in this Plus token were regular working joes in China who attended a conference and told them how to buy BTC with ATMs or with Chinese Bitcoin exchanges and might have lead to the rally we had in April till June. I have no idea if this is true however.

The money hopefully gets frozen by police and returned to the investors.

[STT]

Bitconnect ponzi which put us in the nasty 2018 bear market

I really dont blame Bitconnect for the reversal of the 20k peak, it was a part of the signs perhaps.   A headline story to demonstrate some of why the flows receded for Bitcoin but if anything overall ETH and its various ICO was a bigger deal, even if all genuine the startups did not deliver the growth returns that would have justified the expansion in the monetary base for that Blockchain.   How this then relates to Bitcoin on a separate blockchain is not all clear but sure its all part of the story, I would not dismiss each part of the bear market story.
 
 This is why I prefer graphs for all the nonsense some might think that can represent, its alot clearer to just observe and accept the trends and watch for repetition in future.

[michellee]

So if there are more than 200k btc, I think bitcoin price should increase so high because the hackers will hold the big amount of bitcoin and I don't think they will sell it right now. They will hold until the price can increase because they want to make bigger money, and besides that, they will wait until the situations calm down.

I am sure that the exchange will be careful from the hacker and they will check one by one of the member's wallet so they can prevent the bad things that might happen to them.