Why did SBF want to keep BTC under $20,000? The hidden game behind Bitcoin price fluctuations.

Author: Jaleel, BlockBeats

Editor: Jack, BlockBeats

In the second half of 2022, the price of Bitcoin experienced significant fluctuations due to market volatility. In early May, the price of Bitcoin was nearly 40,000, but then experienced a sharp decline, falling to nearly 25,000 by the end of July. For the following five months, the price of Bitcoin has been fluctuating between 20,000 and 30,000.

Although the price manipulation game in the cryptocurrency market has been played to perfection, it has always been an open secret among market makers. However, as the trial of SBF's guilt continues into its crucial second week, he, who was once one of the heavyweight market participants, now has key witnesses and testimony regarding the manipulation of Bitcoin prices.

Behind all of this, it is the users themselves who pay the price

Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research and former girlfriend of SBF, provided a lot of testimony in this week's criminal fraud trial at FTX. According to Caroline Ellison's latest testimony and the notes of conversations with SBF provided, SBF instructed Alameda to sell BTC obtained from FTX customer funds continuously if Bitcoin exceeded $20,000 in order to stabilize the Bitcoin price below $20,000.

Slowly eroding people's confidence in Bitcoin

Why would FTX want to take such actions? One view is that this may be for their own benefit, maintaining liquidity and offsetting losses from other investments.

According to YouTuber DivXMaN (@crypto_div), FTX may have encountered liquidity issues by gambling customer funds, so maintaining a low price for Bitcoin can ensure that they can better handle withdrawal requests under liquidity pressure. In addition, a low-priced Bitcoin will also suppress the prices of other assets, providing higher upward potential when they try to solve the problem through trading.

Encryption KOL TumbleBit (@2040yyds) also expressed his opinion on social media: "The usual means of market makers on trading platforms is to push up Crypto (the main targets are ETH and other Top20 currencies), while suppressing the exchange rate of Crypto/BTC. This is not just FTX's practice, but also the case with other trading platforms."

TumbleBit believes that many players still believe that Crypto will inevitably surpass Bitcoin, all because they were brainwashed too long in the last bull market and are accustomed to the explosive trend of the currency circle. If it weren't for SBF manipulating funds by smashing users' BTC, coins like SOL, AVAX, FTT would not have risen, and even ETH would not have achieved its current gains. And behind all of this, it is the users themselves who pay the price.

As for why SBF did this, he continued to explain: "Doing so can slowly erode people's confidence in Bitcoin and attract all funds to Crypto. Once users' trading habits are cultivated, they can smoothly dump large amounts of junk coins to lower-level players." Some community members have refuted these analyses, believing that this is simply due to the inherent volatility of the cryptocurrency market.

华尔街巨擘或从中获利不少

Wall Street giants or profit from it

Since the beginning of this year, Wall Street giants such as BlackRock have applied for Bitcoin ETFs, backed by Citadel Securities, Fidelity Investments, and EDX Markets, a cryptocurrency trading platform. During the period when Bitcoin maintained a price of 20,000, no one knows how many chips they have hoarded.

The well-known KOL AutismCapital (@AutismCapital) once stated that BlackRock's decision to launch ETFs under the supervision of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) may indicate that the SEC is conducting a cleanup operation to eliminate "low-level scammers" in the cryptocurrency field, making it easier for the "elite giants" of traditional finance in the United States to rebuild a gaming platform according to their own rules.

Related reading: "Why is the crypto community generally pessimistic about applying for a Bitcoin ETF under the high regulatory pressure of BlackRock?"

As the largest and most respected asset management company, BlackRock may establish a special relationship with the SEC, and we all know that FTX has always maintained a very good subtle relationship with the SEC, and there may be many unknown secrets behind this.

Combined with the rumored "Operation Choke Point 2.0" by the US government to suppress the cryptocurrency industry, large traditional companies partnered with the US government are being introduced by expelling native cryptocurrency companies, in an attempt to control Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

Behind all of this careful planning, is SBF also a part of it? This is also a thought-provoking question, as the artificial manipulation of prices has caused a lot of concern among investors. Many analysts and cryptocurrency observers believe that this market manipulation activity is not just limited to FTX or Alameda, but other trading platforms and large holders may also be involved.

However, from an optimistic perspective, although Bitcoin suffered a huge blow in the second half of 2022, its price gradually stabilized and began to slowly rise from the beginning of 2023. By April 2023, Bitcoin had surpassed 30,000, which also indicates that the industry is slowly recovering.

In this environment, it is particularly important for ordinary investors to maintain caution and conduct thorough research, bearing in mind the most important encryption slogan in the industry: "Your keys, your bitcoin. Not your keys, not your bitcoin." And have fewer fantasies of getting rich quick, because when trading against top traders like SBF, the cost paid is always one's own liquidity.

Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:

Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia