Bitcoin (BTC) being the King of Crypto, generally dictates the direction the rest of the market will take. When BTC is fumbling in the market like in the current market times, every other coin and token also fumbles. This is because BTC dominates the total market capitalization by occupying 38.4% of the current total market cap of $326.6 Billion at the moment of writing this.
A brief check on the history of BTC prices yields the King of Crypto had peaked on December 17th at a value of around $20,000. Coincidentally, this was just hours before the BTC futures started being offered by the CME group amidst lots of fanfare and delight of crypto-traders who saw this as a sign of crypto joining the mainstream of investing. However, a few traders were wary of Wallstreet getting into the business and warned that the ‘big shots’ in the big investment firms, will probably find a way to short BTC and any other crypto out there.
Coincidentally, the value of BTC and the entire market capitalization started to depreciate after the CME Bitcoin futures started being offered. Not forgetting that the CME group was also joined by the CBOE in launching the futures on the same week.
It is no secret that plenty of traders have speculated manipulation. Besides, there is no regulation to protect against it in the crypto-verse in the first place. Therefore, it is a free for all or whoever has the might to orchestrate a market coup. These type of manipulations can only be done by institutional investors, large-scale traders and any other large entity that can do this.
If it is possible for the same institutional investors to manipulate Wallstreet with all its regulations, then the crypto-market would be stealing candy from a child for them. Such moves of manipulation have been popularized by Hollywood movies such as Wallstreet (1 & 2), The Big Short and Margin Call. One thing is usually the driving force of such manipulation, pure profits. And as the Wallstreet character known as Gordon Gekko once said, ‘Money never sleeps.’ The same fictional character was also quoted as saying that greed is good [in Wallstreet].
Therefore, and with the above theory, it is highly likely that BTC has been the subject of manipulation all along. What we can then do are three things: cash out with our tails between our legs, play along by learning to trade like a professional or hope that regulation will step in to save the little guys who simply want to HODL