Tag: manipulation,
: Bank stocks’ volatility draws scrutiny for potential market manipulation: report
Bitcoin’s 2023 Price Rise ‘Very Suspicious’, Says Manipulation Researcher
Mr. Griffin looked at the flow of digital tokens going in and out of Bitfinex and identified several distinct patterns that suggest that someone or some people at the exchange successfully worked to push up prices when they sagged at other exchanges. To do that, the person or people used a secondary virtual currency, known as Tether, which was created and sold by the owners of Bitfinex, to buy up those other cryptocurrencies.
To reach this conclusion, the paper’s two authors “sifted through an incredible 200 gigabytes of trading data, equal to the troves that the Smithsonian Institution collects in two years,” according to a new article in Fortune, “and followed sales and purchases from 2.5 million separate wallets.”
The researchers ultimately concluded that a single, still unidentified, Bitcoin “whale” triggered nearly 60% of Bitcoin’s one-year rise in 2017 from under $1,000 to over $19,000. But more importantly, Fortune now reports that Griffin “suspects that a similar dynamic is operating today.”
Toward the end of 2022, another mystifying trend caught Griffin’s eye. Despite the crypto crash and myriad other negative forces, every time Bitcoin briefly breached the $16,000 floor, it bounced above that level and kept stubbornly trading between $16,000 and $17,000. Almost unbelievably, as the crypto market has continued to unravel into 2023, Bitcoin has gone in the opposite direction, trading up 35% since Jan. 7 to $23,000.
“It’s very suspicious,” Griffin told Fortune. “The same mechanism we saw in 2017 could be at play now in the still unreal Bitcoin market.”
For Griffin, the way normally super-volatile Bitcoin went calm and stable in the stormiest of times for crypto fits a scenario where boosters are uniting to support and juice its price. “If you’re a crypto manipulator, you want to set a floor under the price of your coin,” added Griffin. “In a period of highly negative sentiment, we’ve seen suspiciously solid floors under Bitcoin.”
It’s important to note that no definitive proof of chicanery has so far emerged. “The space is bigger now so it’s harder to dig the data,” says Griffin. “Sophisticated players may be expert at hiding their identities.” We have seen credible leaks asserting that major market participants call meetings of the sector’s elite when they fear a crypto leader plans to make what they consider a reckless, industry-endangering move. But no evidence has surfaced that the players are gathering to coordinate buying of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.
Fortune data editor Scott DeCarlo ran a detailed analysis and found, among other things, that Bitcoin “at peak FTX-induced turmoil showed both its smallest swings ever by a wide margin, and divergence from low to high that was one-fourth to one-fifth its average over the past six years.” And they’re not the only ones asking questions:
In a blog post on Nov. 30 titled “Bitcoin’s Last Stand,” European Central Bank Director General for market operations Ulrich Bindseil and ECB adviser Jürgen Schaaf dismissed Bitcoin’s resurgence as “an artificially induced last gasp before the road to irrelevance.” Two leading figures on Wall Street told this writer on background that Bitcoin’s price action, by resisting a flood of bad news, looks phony and different from a normal free market ruled by independent buyers and sellers.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader wired_parrot for submitting the story.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Don’t be fooled: Crypto is going up because of market manipulation
We’re not just a couple of weeks into 2023 and crypto prices are spiking. Seeing number go up might entice you to throw some money into Bitcoin or Ethereum. After all, maybe this is the beginning of another crypto bull market? You wouldn’t want to miss out!
Well, just wait a minute. Consider this first: Why are crypto prices suddenly rising?
There are plenty of analysts out there trying to make logical sense of the recent bump in cryptocurrencies value – inflation is slowing, belief that the Federal Reserve is done with hiking interest rate hiking, bullish news on crypto – but no, that’s not really it.
There’s been no big positive news in the industry. There aren’t reports of some new, mainstream avenues of adoption. Sure, the stock market is up a bit right now in the new year, but not at the same level cryptocurrency is.
So, what’s going on here? Market manipulation.
Bitcoin is riding high, but isn’t heading to the moon anytime soon
Bitcoin is hovering over $21,000 as of mid-January, a price that has not been seen since early November 2022. That was before the collapse of FTX, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world. Crypto took a pounding in 2022, as major stablecoins, lenders, and other crypto companies failed, causing domino effects throughout the industry.
However, things are not looking up. Even though one of the most tumultuous years for crypto is behind us, 2023 thus far has not treated crypto much better with the failure of Gemini Earn and crypto lender Nexo’s offices being raided over allegations of illegal activity. There’s no good news on the horizon. In addition, the majority of retail inventors now view cryptocurrency as too risky, so who’s buying?
As longtime cryptocurrency writer and critic David Gerard explains: The big players in the industry are “buying” in order to control the market.
“The bitcoin price is whatever the large players need it to be,” writes Gerard. “The market is very thin and trivially manipulable with the billions of pseudo-dollars in unbacked stablecoins on the unregulated offshore exchanges. The price needs to be high enough so the big boys’ loans don’t get liquidated; but it needs to be low enough so that the bagholders don’t attempt to cash out.”
John Reed Stark, a former SEC official, concurred with Gerard’s assessment.
“A recent Forbes analysis of 157 crypto exchanges found that 51 percent of daily bitcoin trading volume being reported was likely bogus,” tweeted Stark, referring to a Forbes report from last summer.
Who is doing the buying? It’s not clear
A more recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that “wash trades accounted for up to 70 percent of all transactions on non-compliant crypto exchanges, suggesting most trades on these platforms are fraudulent.”
Wash trading is basically when an investor trades with itself in order to make it look like there is activity in the market in order to boost value. Basically, it’s market manipulation.
So when you hear investment advice from people like Anthony Scaramucci, the guy who worked as communication director for Trump’s White House for about 10 days in 2017, proceed with caution. Scaramucci now heads up an investment firm called SkyBridge Capital and recently told CNBC that 2023 will be a “recovery year” for Bitcoin, with prices skyrocketing backup to new highs in two or three years.
It’s important to note that 30 percent of SkyBridge Capital was bought out by FTX about two months before the exchange collapsed. The firm made significant crypto investments with the tens of millions from that deal, right before crypto tanked even further. Scaramucci recently said that he’s hoping that SkyBridge can buy back the stake it sold to FTX. So, it’s not too shocking for Scaramucci to be putting “good vibes” out there for crypto so the firm can make a return on their investments.
It’s just yet another way the big crypto companies and investment funds manipulate the market.
OpenAI, Georgetown, Stanford study finds LLMs can boost public opinion manipulation
Crypto: Feds said to investigate FTX’s SBF over possible crypto price manipulation, while senators want his testimony
Democratic lawmakers want Elon Musk to explain China’s role in ‘platform manipulation’ during protests
Three Democratic lawmakers in the House are demanding answers from Elon Musk about a recent “platform manipulation campaign” related to recent protests in China. In a letter to the Twitter CEO, Representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi, Adam Schiff and Jackie Speier write that they have “deep concern” about the recent spam campaign that drowned out tweets about the protests.
The lawmakers want Musk to answer questions about whether Twitter has any evidence the spam campaign was a state-backed effort by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). “To ensure that the United States is prepared to counter, thwart, and deter foreign influence threats online, it is critical that we understand the extent of the PRC’s potential manipulation of Twitter and identify how recent changes at Twitter are affecting the threat of CCP foreign influence operations on social media,” they write.
The lawmakers also address recent changes at Twitter under Musk’s leadership, with questions about what Twitter’s “emphasis on free speech” means for information access on the platform; as well as whether the company has the “capacity” to identify platform manipulation campaigns.
Since Musk took over Twitter, questions have swirled about how he will handle the platform’s dealings with Chinese officials, such as requests to remove “state affiliated” labels from their accounts. Tesla, the other company Musk runs, is highly dependent on China for manufacturing.
So far, Musk hasn’t publicly acknowledged the letter, which provides a December 31st deadline for a response. Twitter no longer has a communications team. However, Musk has shown little regard for other letters from lawmakers. He recently addressed a letter from Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey about Twitter’s failure to stop impersonation attempts with a dismissive tweet.