Could Bitcoin’s Fall From Its $20,000 Peak Be Down to Market Manipulation?

On December 17 2017, Bitcoin ‘s value hit a peak of $19,900. At that point it seemed like anything was possible, and smashing through the $20K barrier was a formality. Who could have foreseen that that was to be as good as it would get for BTC? Since then it has been a story of a steady decline, bottoming out at $6,631 in February. Bitcoin appeared to be rallying in early May, and a $10,000 price looked a cert. It didn’t happen, and now BTC is battling to stay above $7,000.

How The Crypto Market Is Manipulated

This week, a group of crypto researchers and digital currency traders calling themselves The Crypto Fam have drawn attention to the curious fact that the day Bitcoin peaked (and then began its steady fall from grace) was also the day that Bitcoin futures markets of CME and CBOE were launched. The Crypto Fam claim major-level investors and heavyweight retail traders were in a position to manipulated the Bitcoin market, and pay out short contracts. They could achieve this by purchasing and selling massive amounts of Bitcoin in a correlated manner via the futures market.

In a message posted on their Twitter page, @TheCryptoFam, the group say:

“Bitcoin reached its all-time high (ATH) on December 17th of 2017, the exact date that CME futures trading began. In retrospect, it is now obvious that smart/institutional money was stocking up before that date. Hindsight is 20/20. Since 12/17/17, Bitcoin has been in a bear market. The remainder of this analysis will focus on patterns observed during this market downturn, as well as signals for when it might come to an end.”

The Crypto Fam believe that the Bitcoin market was hit by three serious “corrections” (i.e., market manipulations) since December 2017. Two of those corrections resulted in a drop in sell volumes. The group also noted that whenever the Bitcoin market experienced a “correction”, the significance of the drop would lessen, which indicated that the big-time investors had exhausted their supply of Bitcoin after causing these corrections.

“Not only is selling volume lower, but the drops have been less severe. Each component of each leg down is less steep than the previous leg down. RSI, a momentum indicator, also shows selling has been less extreme. The trend is ‘flattening out.’”

As shocking as it may seem, it is quite possible that the Crypto Fam are absolutely right, and heavy-duty investors have been manipulating the cryptocurrency market for some time. Unfortunately, if indeed it has been skillful manipulation of the Bitcoin futures market that so dramatically affected the value of BTC since its December peak until now, no laws have actually been broken, their actions are in fact legal, and such methods are likely to used and “corrections” continue to occur until stiff regulations are introduced.