He Bitcoinand consequently the rest of the cryptocurrenciesseemed already ousted at the end of 2022, reaching lows that had not been seen for years, and many venturing that the best times of digital currency had passed and, as always, they have been wrong.
With the beginning of 2023, Bitcoin has not stopped rising, stabilizing above $20,000 and with estimates that it could reach highs again by the end of the year.
Once again, those who sold out of fear lose their money and those who held on will now become rich again.
But this is not escaping the experts, and yet John Griffina finance professor at the University of Texas McCombs School of Business, sees the current pattern as much the same as it was in 2017, and believes there is some manipulation.
Around that time in 2017, they saw that it seemed like someone or a group was using a lot of money to manipulate the market for their own benefit. Then in 2018, they were able to discern that a single Bitcoin whale, meaning some user who owns huge amounts of Bitcoin, would be taking advantage of the market situation.
And now the behavior of Bitcoin since the end of 2022 draws the attention of this expert again. And it is that despite the collapse of cryptocurrencies, every time Bitcoin briefly exceeded the floor of $16,000 it bounced above that level and kept.
However, Bitcoin is maintaining the opposite direction to what was thought, and has already reached up to $23,000 recently, now standing at around $21,600.
“It’s very suspicious. The same mechanism that we saw in 2017 and could be in play now in the still unrealistic Bitcoin market.”, points to fortune.
He comments that Bitcoin is a very volatile cryptocurrency but that in the most stormy times, that is, at the end of last year, it stabilized in very unusual scenarios: “if you are a cryptocurrency manipulator, you want to set a floor under the price of your coin. In a period of very negative sentiment, we have seen suspiciously strong bottoms under Bitcoin”.
In any case, no definitive proof of this manipulation has yet emerged: “the space is larger now, so it is more difficult to extract the data. Sophisticated gamers can be experts at hiding their identities”, he comments.
However, it does not rule out that these practices will come to light in the numerous bankruptcy court proceedings that are currently underway.
However, he thinks he sees a series of evidence that Bitcoin is benefiting from some kind of coordinated buying, as if preparing for a takeoff to the highs in the coming months.
In fact, from November 5, the day before the FTX reports began to spread, until November 9, Bitcoin fell from $21,000 to $15,900.
then the currency, which is usually super volatile, remained flat, and that is that between the 62 days between November 10 and January 11, it traded between $16,000 and $17,000. Then, from January 12 to 24, Bitcoin began an upward march to reach $23,000.
But other experts do not see anything strange with the behavior of Bitcoin
However, other cryptocurrency experts see no plot to inflate these prices but rather the market literally works fine: “Price movements in Bitcoin are notoriously cyclical in nature. Often the best explanation is the most boring.“, comments andrew thurmana researcher at Blockchain analytics provider Nansen.
Add that “in this case, the price of Bitcoin is rising because there are more buyers than sellersThurman adds.
“I don’t see a group that retains prices. Now we have a balanced dynamic. The forced sale that followed the FTX collapse has been absorbed to some extent and we see no more forced sales.“, Add Vetle Lundea senior analyst at Norwegian crypto data analysis firm Arcane Research.
