Well all crypto coins are manipulated ,whales always will pump a coin on a week and then left it,these happend to bitcoin this year already they joined and made bitcoin reach almost 500 dollars ,all of those were based into the halving that is very near.
what whales?
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the "whales" are the exchangers and their investors who control the whole BTC market. The exchangers are running bots and they can rise or drop the BTC price how they want. MT Gox did the same and there proofs that others do the same.
miners are whales, they have accumulated at least 100k coins in all those year, and everyone with that amount is a whale
also early adopters are not out of the game yet, i'm sure there is still someone with plenty of coin, 50+ or 100k+
miners want the cash not shit. they are buying their houses, cars, gold, more houses, whores with cash not with Bitcoin. maybe they own some BTC but not a lot...would you keep 50K BTC? come on! let's not be hypocrites. The goal is the cash.
Bitcoin is just an opportunity for miners and they know that very well. They will suck all the money they can from this biz and that's it
Once the shit will stink, they will close everything and end of story.
I hope you don't believe that the miners are fairies with a lot of good intentions and that they care about "BTC community". They just need a community to reach their goal; same with exchangers.
How do they maintain this community ? Through forums like this one, through media like Coindesk and so on...
Everything is around the "CASH", nobody gives a fuck about Bitcoin itself