It's been around since the dawn of money...

A recent study revealed "startling" news via mass media that Bitcoin's prices had been manipulated in the late 2017 surge, primarily through the issuance of Tether. This came as a surprise to literally nobody who has followed cryptocurrency for any significant length of time, failing to reveal any actual new information that hadn't already been acknowledged for quite some in the cryptocurrency world.

It's true. The issuance of Tether probably does have some effect on the price of Bitcoin, since the injection of more fiat -- even fiat that might not actually exist -- into the crypto market naturally should cause some price fluctuations, exacerbated by speculation and FOMO as casual investors pile into assets as they rise in price. It's a self-fulfilling cycle that eventually resulted in an unsustainable pattern that then caused the massive crash in January.

Again, this is not news to anyone who has been involved in the cryptosphere for some time now, but it does dissuade potential new casual investors from dipping their toes into Bitcoin, at least at this particular moment.

Here's the thing that is forgotten about in this whole scenario. All money and resources of monetary value are manipulated. A government can effortlessly turn the knob up or down on interest rates and on money production to easily cause severe variations in currency valuations, especially in comparison to each other, as has been seen in the past with the Chinese Yuan against the US dollar. At one point the Chinese president Xi Jinping even argued that Bitcoin can not be considered real currency because it can NOT be directly manipulated by a central entity, at least not in the same way that fiat can be.

Another example of blatant manipulation is the stock market. Apple recently announced plans to buy back $100 billion of its company's own shares due to tax cuts. By Apple buying back such a large portion of its own shares, the price of said shares increases, via the artificial demand fabricated by the self-owned shares. It's a widespread practice in the stock market that is currently causing artificial rallies in pricing with no true demand for the shares. This too will cause an implosion, at some point.

The resource sector isn't free from manipulation either. Take a very simple example: OPEC. This conglomerate of oil-producing economies makes agreements on a regular basis regarding the quantity of oil to produce in order to achieve desirable prices. A few years ago, when the United States increased shale oil production to achieve "energy independence" from OPEC, OPEC simply decided to crank up production, flooding global markets with barrels of oil. This caused oil prices to plummet to the point that the profit margin on shale oil was so tiny, many shale producers turned off the taps. Sure, the OPEC economies lost some income too, but it shut down their competitors, for a while anyway.

Market manipulation is prevalent throughout world economies. It's arguably unavoidable. The difference here is that these massive entities do not have a huge stake in Bitcoin at this point (as far as we know -- if they did, I suspect they wouldn't be poo-pooing the technology so enthusiastically).

How can these wealthy entities fix this problem? Easy. Downplay the value of crypto, spread negative news, all while picking it up at bargain prices. Could it be that these forces are simply trying to play catch-up, slowly accumulating crypto while simultaneously nay-saying it and declaring it a scam and a fraud?

Think for a moment. Do they act any differently in any other market that makes money?

*This is not professional trading advice - it's just my opinion!

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source:
https://globalnews.ca/news/4273193/bitcoin-value-2017-market-manipulation/

image source:
https://fisherfunds.co.nz/newsroom/general-investing/market-manipulation