"Market Manipulation" - how does it happen?

[bitcoinrocks]

The BTC price is a little frustrating.  I keep reading about "market manipulation" dragging it down.  How does that play out exactly?

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[franky1]

The BTC price is a little frustrating.  I keep reading about "market manipulation" dragging it down.  How does that play out exactly?

well when most orders are below 1btc, with only a couple orders under 5btc.. it is pretty simple for someone with 200 btc to eat a nice slice of the order list and then let the sheeple panic do the rest of the snowball effect.

the easiest thing to do is to just ignore the exchanges as they are not true supply and demand indicators, they are just bot trading speculators who day trade.

use localbitcoins or bitcoin-otc as your true supply and demand indicators. try not to let someone with just 200 coins determine the market cap value of 13.5million

[turvarya]

Let's assume I have a lot of fiat and BTC.
I want the price to go up, I just go on an exchange and buy a lot of BTC (doesn't matter that there are more than one exchange, since they are pretty much in sync). People see, that the price is going up and will buy them self, since they assume, that it will go up more anyways. So, I started it and just have to wait till it reaches the peak and than sell a lot of BTC for a profit. People see, the price is going down, and the same happens in the other direction.
Repeat until you are richer than you have already been.

[redsn0w]

Let's assume I have a lot of fiat and BTC.
I want the price to go up, I just go on an exchange and buy a lot of BTC (doesn't matter that there are more than one exchange, since they are pretty much in sync). People see, that the price is going up and will buy them self, since they assume, that it will go up more anyways. So, I started it and just have to wait till it reaches the peak and than sell a lot of BTC for a profit. People see, the price is going down, and the same happens in the other direction.
Repeat until you are richer than you have already been.

It's not so easy , you're not alone in this world  .

[Elwar]

I did it once with one of the alt coins with about $1000 in its early stage.

I bought up about $200 worth, which was a lot for such a small market.

Then I put half of that for sale (let's say 10 coinz per $1) of 1000 coins at $1.05.

With such a 'big' sale, other sellers put their bids at $1.04, $1.03, $1.02...etc...they kept their bids lower than mine because they knew the market would not go above my sell for a long time.

When someone puts their bid at $.98 I put another sell of 1000 at $1.00 solidifying that $.98 and more smaller sell orders at $.97...$.96...$.95.

Push it down as far as you can before you start seeing walls building on the other side. Then you start buying up coins in small quantities...keeping the price low with all new sellers. Move the big wall of 1000 coins from $1.05 down to $.97 ensuring that the price is going down and now is the time to sell.

Once I have the other $800 turned into coinz at $.95...I drop the wall at $.97. The price starts going up...the spring has sprung...the price continues rising, pull the sell at $1.05, other walls fall...the price is now over $1.10. Start selling a few at a time during the rally until you end up with $1,100. A 10% profit with a little bit of manipulation.  

Now imagine this on a larger scale with $1 million.

Plus they use one exchange (see: BitStamp) to move the price while their main money sits on another exchange gobbling up the change in market moves.

[franky1]

I did it once with one of the alt coins with about $1000 in its early stage.

I bought up about $200 worth, which was a lot for such a small market.

Then I put half of that for sale (let's say 10 coinz per $1) of 1000 coins at $1.05.

With such a 'big' sale, other sellers put their bids at $1.04, $1.03, $1.02...etc...they kept their bids lower than mine because they knew the market would not go above my sell for a long time.

When someone puts their bid at $.98 I put another sell of 1000 at $1.00 solidifying that $.98 and more smaller sell orders at $.97...$.96...$.95.

Push it down as far as you can before you start seeing walls building on the other side. Then you start buying up coins in small quantities...keeping the price low with all new sellers. Move the big wall of 1000 coins from $1.05 down to $.97 ensuring that the price is going down and now is the time to sell.

Once I have the other $800 turned into coinz at $.95...I drop the wall at $.97. The price starts going up...the spring has sprung...the price continues rising, pull the sell at $1.05, other walls fall...the price is now over $1.10. Start selling a few at a time during the rally until you end up with $1,100. A 10% profit with a little bit of manipulation.  

Now imagine this on a larger scale with $1 million.

Plus they use one exchange (see: BitStamp) to move the price while their main money sits on another exchange gobbling up the change in market moves.

creating walls is the more fun way, even i have to admit to doing this in late 2012. but haven't really thrown any large amount into an exchange since. im just hoarding and playing with a hand full of coin as junk change that i dont mind losing

[bitcoinrocks]

I suppose there's no way to stop this and we all have to watch the waves until Average Joe has a good reason to buy in.

[uvt9]

Everytime price going down people screaming "market manipulation", "whales pushing price down to buy cheap coins". Why nobody say that when price going up ?

[franky1]

Everytime price going down people screaming "market manipulation", "whales pushing price down to buy cheap coins". Why nobody say that when price going up ?

the secret is to not look at the exchange rate and not read sheeples screams

[Lethn]

Everytime price going down people screaming "market manipulation", "whales pushing price down to buy cheap coins". Why nobody say that when price going up ?

the secret is to not look at the exchange rate and not read sheeples screams

My favourite one is seeing a coin tick up slightly and then somebody immediately making a post about how fucking awesome what they've bought is and that it's going to get pumped.

[LiteCoinGuy]

do you read the press? everything is manipulated today. 

[TinaK]

Market Manipulation is not difficult if you have enough funds and a bit wisdom

[Soros Shorts]

Why nobody say that when price going up ?

Oh, trust me, they did.

Yeah, the next time the price goes up quickly just go to the speculation section and you can tell who got caught in the short squeeze from all their squealing.

[Coin_Master]

The BTC price is a little frustrating.  I keep reading about "market manipulation" dragging it down.  How does that play out exactly?

well when most orders are below 1btc, with only a couple orders under 5btc.. it is pretty simple for someone with 200 btc to eat a nice slice of the order list and then let the sheeple panic do the rest of the snowball effect.

the easiest thing to do is to just ignore the exchanges as they are not true supply and demand indicators, they are just bot trading speculators who day trade.

use localbitcoins or bitcoin-otc as your true supply and demand indicators. try not to let someone with just 200 coins determine the market cap value of 13.5million

Well said, I agree entirely.  Adding to that, it pays to keep in mind that opposition to Bitcoin is still a very real threat.  How that might play out is if a large entity with plenty of money decides to buy bitcoins over the counter (otc) without affecting market price, and then dump those bought bitcoins (at a loss) on the market.  One needs to remember that not everyone is trying to make money with Bitcoin.  Ultimately however, their efforts to suppress the price will fail, all they are doing by keeping the price down is making Bitcoin more accessible.

Hope that was clear.

[amaclin]

[Rampton]

The BTC price is a little frustrating.  I keep reading about "market manipulation" dragging it down.  How does that play out exactly?

There are many ways people can manipulate the price. Remember, bitcoins value is supply and demand so tinkering with the supply of them can effect the demand. Bitcoin isn't the only thing open to this manipulation though. I read recently the banks got caught manipulating currency prices and were find because of it.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/12/us-banks-forex-settlement-cftc-idUSKCN0IW0E520141112

I'm sure there's much more shady behaviour we don't even know about too.

[bitcoinrocks]

So the basic idea is to move the market and then profit from the momentum you created?

[fastaslighting]

Here is the key to it you go to bittrex and pull up the order book say you rented a rig and made 1 million coins on a new coin the is at say 15 stoch at the moment and people are putting out stupid sell orders like 100 Statch and above well just dump your 1 millions coins in that market and eat all the higher orders up and you'll get a nice cost average gain depends on how many coins on the exchange like CEX-IO those coins are real easy to do it to expecially worldcoin and potcoin and a couple other sometimes I make  %400 and above on a market manipulation over there and once your get an amount of .01 which you can do with a buy of .003 or .004 on a couple of those coins then just withdraw your holding in BTC and rent more mining power rinse and repeate
they took the easiest coin to do it to away though AUR was so easy you could buy it at 7000 Statch and it would go to 120000 statch if you bought in for .003 or .004 stach  that's how thin the trade was on it and how outrageous the people spread the buy and sell orders apart.

[JackRipper]

So the basic idea is to move the market and then profit from the momentum you created?

Or watch somebody else move it and then profit from the momentum he created.

[turvarya]

So the basic idea is to move the market and then profit from the momentum you created?

The really frightening thing about that, is that you wouldn't even need to invest for your self to move it.
If Andreas M. Antonopoulos would publicly say, that the price is going up, it would go up, since people would just believe him and buy Bitcoins.
That happens all the time in stock markets. Broker Houses(not sure if that is the right term) often just tell their clients, that a stock is going up and they should buy. So, they buy and it is going up.