Since December 17, the bitcoin price has been on a continuous decline, falling from $19,900 to $5,980 at its yearly low. While the bitcoin price has seen two mid-term recoveries and corrective rallies, both failed to test two major support levels at $12,000 and $10,000.
Market Manipulation Theory
Recently, a group of cryptocurrency researchers and traders suggested that the bitcoin price has began to fall from its all-time high at around $20,000, on the same day the bitcoin futures market of CME and CBOE launched.
The group of traders claimed that through the futures market, institutional investors and large-scale retail traders manipulated the market to cash out short contracts by purchasing and selling massive amounts of bitcoin in a correlated manner.
“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 group said.
It added that every time the cryptocurrency market experienced a correction, the magnitude of the drop declined, proposing that the large-scale investors had less amounts of bitcoin after driving major corrections. The group emphasized that the cryptocurrency market experienced three major corrections since December 2017 and the two subsequent corrections recorded lower sell volumes.
“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.’”