Topic: On whales and their impact (Read 480 times)

I think exchanges have alot to do with whales trading because most of their activities originate from one exchange then traders help them unknowingly by their activities which create all the FUD and FOMO It will be better to trade with value of assets in mind than just what is pumping and what will pump later but is hard to overcome our greed as humans

I think that the system due to which very large players manipulate the market is much more complicated than we might think. Let's not forget that those who control the market have at their disposal not only money, but also exchanges where trading takes place. This combination is enough to create any price they need.

It may have looked like a crash in the end

Damn, it was a crash if we take into account how much the price dropped. However, I had been there and it felt exactly like a very well thought-out attempt at squeezing maximum juice from the market. There was plenty of intermittent sell pressure but it still didn't feel like a reckless dump. It felt like someone was giving traders time to recuperate

Actually, there are quite a few topics revealing first-hand experience of that time, and it definitely was not like one huge sell into the market at whatever price. In other words, the final price at the end of this selling spree was likely the best price that such a sell could ever get

I'm not so sure of that. The way everything around the sales of these coins has gone stinks. It wouldn't even surprise me if coins have been dumped recklessly with large short positions to extract even more money out of the market.

Don't forget that they took hundreds of millions in fiat out of the market, and that especially in the crypto world with the poor liquidity of exchanges, is quite an achievement on its own. They intentionally crashed the market, and that can't be denied.

It seems to me that we can't speak for those who would go as whales here

That said, I don't think someone who is buying a pile of bitcoins or going to sell as much actually cares about whoever might be on the opposite side of the trade and what their agenda could be. For example, when the Mt. Gox custodian was selling his huge stash of coins, he was just actively selling with his only concern not to crash the price too fast

So did he really care (let alone fear) if his buyer was a whale who had his own agenda and plans? I don't think very much. I guess he was just happy to see a lot of support building against his selling orders as that allowed him to liquidate his coins at the highest price possible (given the market conditions back in the day)

Massage as you said it or they also have a big part to why it is happening.

I do think whales also have the time where they dont profit from what they do or they cannot just go back into buying anymore.
Why? There could be another whale on the other side which also want to make profit out of one token or whatever pick they where trading.
What is the percentage that they are both trading the same token? A large percentage.

So they cannot just manipulate the price. They also fear that it might go the other way and they will lose on whatever decision they will make.

Depending on instances yet we cant really conclude nor generalize that possible buys on big volume with big institutions or those people who do have deep pockets would be considered manipulation anytime.No matter which way it do really have a big impact on how it do moves the entire market.
We can spot out manipulation when it already happens ( specially pump and dump of prices) but if we are still on the process, pointing it out is really hard.

Personally, I wouldn't call that manipulation

As what you mean (i.e. anyone with deep pockets buying a lot of Bitcoin and thereby moving the price up) is a regular market activity. Technically, this is how we are expecting the market to resurrect in due time, with more institutional buyers entering the fray. Would that count as manipulation? I guess no, though I agree that the term and notion itself is a bit vague and requires a more clear definition

Whales has a very great impact in the market because the market capitalization of the entire crypto market is still very small making it easy for anyone with huge amount of money to manipulate the price with just a click of a button, though this might not work in some coin like bitcoin because it has be listed in so many exchanges and it will take the whale investing huge amount of money in at least 50% of this exchanges to manipulate price.

I think people are making whales into a scapegoat

Whales do buy as well as sell since otherwise they wouldn't be able to become whales in the first place (apart from mining, of course). But we have yet to see any conclusive and solid evidence that any whale is actually engaged in actual market manipulation. People love to talk about this sort of thing as it gives them piece of mind via rationalization of their losses allegedly incurred through deliberate market manipulation by wealthy cryptoholders. Please note that I don't deny market manipulation as such but I'm very dubious and skeptical whether it really comes from whales. Does anyone actually think that the Winklevii (for example) are manipulating the market?

that's true . so what if whales are manipulating the crypto market ? instead of complaining why cant we just utilize thier purpose  ?  when whales dump the market its not bad but rather thats an oppurtunity to buy more coins because the price can now be affordable  .  whales can also pump the price and this is what people love the most becuase they can now easily sell thier coins at a higher rates  . we just need to learn how to wait and to have a self control  .

Whales are just part of every ecosystem and hence manipulations are also happening everywhere and we the small players need to sail on their directions in order to survive otherwise staying away from active markets is recommended. We are all assuming that whales may lose their power over the time but the bitter truth is, group of people who are managing institutional funds may remain as an big manipulator forever and their impact may not find an end. This is the reason, I am saying that whales are just part of system and we must need to get practiced to live among them.

Some whales (either natural or formed) will always be there and will manipulate the market directions but how we make use of those manipulation is alone accountable and definitely not the existence of whales nor their act of manipulations.

People say whales do manipulate the price, that alone would explain how big their impact in the market is.
It's not new to many of us, this market can be manipulated because of its lack of regulation and they can make that over and over again.

I believe the whales has great impact on the cryptocurrencies market and that is why we are having the volatility in the market and the whales are not only existing in the cryptocurrency market but all face of the market.  I think I have the desire to be among the whales as they are the one making really money from this market.

As much as I myself want that to be true, it may not. I understand that many people will massively disbelieve this theory or even discard it as purely conspiratorial (that doesn't necessarily mean that I strongly believe in it myself, just in case) but given how many tethers Bitfinex had printed and taking into account just the possibility that at least some of them were not backed up by real dollars (read, they had been creating tethers out of thin air for some time), a single exchange could potentially start and then support a historic bull run leading to price manipulation on the scale of a few hundred percent

And to an outsider, that would look like perfectly authentic market activity (as it was)

The price movements we have now couldn't be only attributed to one source, I think its a mix from both the exchanges jacking up the volume at the same time whales dropping the bomb. There is no single force that could make this price changes and its really the chain of events that leads to it. If exchanges manipulate data then yes sure it's an easier way to manipulate the market but the only thing that can change the price is of course real time buying and selling which would really influence the market.

But is this really so?

The good project is good not because its investors are keeping their investments in it (it is an inevitable long-term outcome but not a cause of its being good) but because it is good by and in itself (read, it does something useful and creates value). So even if braindead bounty hunters dump the tokens as soon as they get these tokens, people who see the true potential of the project will be just happy to buy up them cheap. In other words, the stupid investors will leave while clever ones come


To sum it up, there is no lack of investors, there is a lack of good and promising projects

Being a good project or not doesn’t really determine if an investor will dump the coin or not, mindset of many investors are so corrupt now that they moment they decide to invest in a project, they only go in for the profit immediately they see one, gone are the days when ICO just started, that many people consider the future of the project but because of the level of uncertainties in the market now, many people will sell off the coin, leaving the project to handle the rest but I still agree with you partially, irrespective of the dumping, any project with good product should be able to swim this wave out and still retain its price, if the product is really working for it.

Whales exist and there's no doubt about it

If we are talking about Bitcoin here, the wallets belonging to individuals which can arguably be considered whales are well known (there are lists of these wallets on the net if anyone is curious). So this is not a matter for debate unlike the real impact of whales on the price. I didn't analyze the stats of the top wallet balance changes but I suspect that the coins are mostly sitting idly there. All action happens with exchange wallets which gives us a good clue as to who is behind most of the price action in the market (if we subtract global trends)


From my perspective, this is an exercise in futility and stupidity. If a certain project is worth it (read, it is not vaporware and does or offers some real stuff), people won't dump their tokens easily, while those who do will regret their hasty and ill-considered decision later

Sometimes, this manipulation of a thing is quite really difficult to understand as many factors we attach to this are still quite speculative since we are not completely sure of it. I know we have whales in the market but the level of their involvement in the market is what I cannot say, I also know that many exchanges too have their own input too in this manipulations and sometimes personally, I do even suspect the project developers, after all they also own a substantial amount of the coins in their jurisdiction though I know we have lots of respected developers that wouldn’t do so, it just my opinion.

Now that we have found our self in this unregulated system that we really need so much and can’t do without, do we give up on the manipulation and see how we can adjust to it or do something about this manipulation which we sometimes tie to whales as a result of their pumping and dumping activities.

A lot of project developer too are quite confused on how to curtail all these manipulation, some of them has even come up with the strategy of locking bounty hunter’s rewards, thinking they are the cause of the dumping going on and yet, it still has not effect, right now, I don’t think any solution will even come from an exchange because they are always the beneficiaries of these manipulation.

Most (if not all) markets have whales it's something unavoidable, I would even say it's something normal with Bitcoin? A lof other markets are manipulated but we never talk about it. How the Markets Are Manipulated
Most of them are currently holding their bag in sleeping mode. Just a few are trading. So I would say their impact is currently minimal.

In my opinion, whales do exist but just that not all the market fluctuation should be attributed to their activities of either buying and selling off their coins over the time. This is because the forces of demand and supply also affects the volume of the market and also the market trend.

I didn't see any prediction was comes in true because peoples are said different set of prediction in future but real market was control by whales because they hold huge volume so anytime it will change the result. I hope some big adoption is change this scenario.

But I never said that such actions are outright irrational, did I?

Moreover, we can judge if a certain decision or step was rational or insane only in hindsight when the dust settles and things can be seen in their true light. Regarding Craig Wright specifically, I didn't say it was an irrational act. Technically, I don't know, and we don't know either (read, we may all be led to believe some bullshit)

I just wanted to point out that things can be more complicated and most certainly are in most cases, so it doesn't always come down to a simple idea that "they're here to make profits, not prop the price of BTC" as propping up the price may exactly be what's needed to make more profits in the future

an irrational investor that is considered big will not remain big if they continue acting irrationally. they are considered big gamblers that reside in the market for a short time before going bankrupt.

as for your example (WC and his BSV nonsense) it was not "irrational" but a rational decision in my opinion. he has been making money off of it by pump and dumping, and by a lot of different scams. not to mention that his FUD was one of the main reason for the last price drop so technically if he shorted bitcoin he could have made a ton of money.

Yeah, but they don't do it on every price movement. They are long-term players mostly as I don't really expect folks like the notorious twins to be scalping the market. Well, they could in fact do just that at Gemini (not with their own hands, of course) using the benefits and advantages that owning an exchange provides, but that would quickly amount to what I wrote in the OP (about exchanges being the top villains in manipulating and milking the market)


It is not, but it is not what I meant either


Actually, we see a lot of hard evidence proving the opposite

And in this manner, the crypto markets are way more irrational than other markets out there. And making profits may in actuality mean propping up the price of some coin (though not necessarily Bitcoin). Bitcoin Cash and its variants are the first which come to mind instantly (e.g. Craig Wright buying hashes to support BSV)


Well, I'd sooner say they are not inclined to participate in manipulation rather than lacking enough financial means to do that. It is exchanges that are driving forces behind market rigging

So it means there are only whales who can make that action. Because to do some act like that, only people with big money that can do it. But i see bitcoin price really can be manipulated, and sometime it can predicted by people.

Exchanges can play a role in price manipulation by reporting fake volumes or wash-trading in some cases but I but more often than not ,there actually whales who swing the prices in their favor. They move funds simultaneously across different exchanges to effect price change ,so it is not solely at the call of a single exchange most times.

They are capable enough to manipulate the market as but it turns out into a horror for small market players. But it sometimes we're so thankful also with them cause with the hypes they made, many will take advantage to sell their coins  and being profitable during that time.

For this whales strategy, we should be careful and never buy coins which it is already on the top cause there will be possible a huge fall occurs in the next days. This may a big catch for new traders and investors.

These whales will do great and eventually manipulate the price when they seen how their profit will go a long way. But for the current price movements right now, I don't we'll be experiencing back fast increasing crypto price. I agree their all winners at the same time, but as we played with them cleverly you'll be able to benefit from their end as they pumped up the price by buying more assets. Being smart is always the key to earn good profit as bull run initiates because of whales, and the smaller fish like us ate small portion of food that eventually brought us sustainable earnings by the time price hits the bullseye.

Whales are the only type of investor that always have a ton of anything at their hand given any time.

I do not believe that they are trying to manipulate it in a bad way or trying to destroy bitcoin or something like many people think but I feel like they are trying to shape it in a way it would make them the most profit. Obviously, they would help it go down if it means more money for them but they do increase the price whenever they can as well, it all depends on which direction they could profit more.

That is the reason, I think people who have a lot of dollars and a lot of bitcoin could basically be running the market right now because honestly the small people even combined do not have the power of a whale that can do just one big move that could change the price drastically.

This is the strong point of your thread that I am strongly agree with although your all point alsmot true. Exchange themselves are involve with manipulation. They can manipulate easily if they want. Actually whales are not only manipulate but also play pump dump. To be honest whales will not sell on loss. They buy on dip and start manipulate or pump when they need to sell. Exchanges and whales both are playing with our money. They will never lose, because they are player and they are umpire. So obviously they are winner always.

As they say, if there is a will, there is a way

Many regular exchanges (like NYSE, CBOE, etc) had been caught cheating in the past. They were penalized, though it doesn't look like they abandoned their dirty tricks as they just went for more complicated stuff. And it would be extremely naive to suggest that things are somehow different in crypto. On the contrary, it is the unregulated nature of many cryptocurrency exchanges that allows them to easily get away with market manipulation. Really, if there is no regulation, what can authorities do?


The manipulation techniques are essentially the same as with any other tradable asset out there, and they have little to do with what you describe here (read, it is not about traders placing orders - whales or otherwise)

Just in case, insider trading is also illegal even though it is all about placing orders in the way you mean it

I tend to agree with you. People stress about what the whales are doing too much, and automatically assume that every single move within the market is caused by bitcoin holders.

Personally, I think that not only is it more likely that these big time stakeholders will not change the composition of their investment portfolio drastically in the short term, it is also absurd to assume that they are behind all the price action, especially when you consider that people can use leverage and derivatives to achieve the volumes that the so called "whales" have, if they buy/sell on the open market. A lot of the transactions are probably not even done on the open market, but rather on the OTC market, where it doesn't reflect openly on the price.

It's just lazy analysis in my opinion if one's just to explain a certain price movement because "a whale did it", or something along the lines of that. IMO, even just looking at the fundamentals and macro factors will do you more good than this.

No whales are not some "hidden" people like crazy conspiracy Illuminati thing people talk about. This is blockchain and you can follow every single move of every wallet that has a lot of money. It means people do see money moving into exchanges and money moving out of exchanges and calculate how it all goes down.

If you see 10 thousand bitcoins moving from unknown wallet to binance and than bitcoin price goes down you know what just happened, that is why we have whalealert twitter address and we check it everyday to make sure nothing huge going on. Just couple months ago we watched it live when Craig sold all his coins and turned them into fiat and paid for hash, these were all followable. I know privacy is something really care about but in blockchain everything is on the ledger.

Yes, sort of (but I guess you know that yourself)

Actually, you already know that "proof" as it is no secret that runaway market manipulation (market rigging, for the lack of a better word) is one of the reasons the financial authorities (e.g. SEC) refuse to give their consent to Bitcoin ETF's. For what it's worth, they articulate it quite clearly that their primary concern with cryptocurrencies is market manipulation, as simple as it reads. Well, none other than Jay Clayton, the chairman of the SEC, said the following:


Technically, this is what I'm trying to convey and emphasize here, that the whales are mostly sitting on the fence (or roaming in neutral waters)

I guess people have to blaim someone if the price isn't satisfying for them. So they blaim whales and their influence accusing them for manipulation. It's funny though how they are not blaiming whales when the price is high.
Anyway, to my opinion the influence of whales on Bitcoin price is exaggerated and they don't have so much power to manipate the market as people think.

Yes whales had a big impact on the prices because of being have a big contribution on the market and it's the only reason why last year there is hard fall on the price.  But nowadays for me only Fud's is interrupting when there's a stable growth rate which in my view reason market nowadays sometimes fluctuate even we buy and hold.

Hang on a sec, if they are not the master manipulators, who is then?

But most importantly, if exchanges control only 8% of the volume (I'm curious where you got that number), it doesn't mean they cannot manipulate prices. Well, I assume you think like major manipulation, i.e. moving prices up and down dozens of percentages and keeping it there. But that's not what I mean. I primarily refer to price manipulation in the form of unexpected flash crashes and bursts that make traders panic and get out of their positions either willingly or forcibly (e.g. via liquidation of margin positions)


The point is, I do not particularly believe in the narrative of whales massively manipulating prices (note, I don't deny their existence as such)

Hey i agree with you I had read a report earlier which cited whales wallet, and it said many of them do not trade actively and they normally have been holding bitcoins. I had suspected this since a while now, that exchanges could be manipulating the prices and your facts makes sense to me. Also I agree with you that whales wallet trading is just a excuse, the exchanges have been directly influencing the prices.

Whales existence is impossible to neglect at this point, but their importance is being put too much. I think sometimes usual buy or sell action by whales is simply following market sentiment. So they're not really 'manipulating' at one point, as exstasie mentioned, it's just a logical reaction to prevent further loss and take profits.

The thing is this is not happening, so you are saying an impossible scenario.
Whales are called whales for a reason, and that is because they can move the price and give impact to the market.

Large traders are reacting to the market just like small traders. Sometimes they take whatever liquidity they can (including throwing up sell walls) because they need to enter/exit their position.

Markets often gravitate towards liquidity (major bid/ask walls) before reversing so placing sell walls when the market is rising and looks strong is actually an established trading practice. It's called "selling into strength." This isn't manipulation.


Sometimes I feel like people around here expect large traders to be irrational. They're here to make profits, not prop the price of BTC.

Basically people all over the trollboxs and Reddit keep complaining that they are losing money due to manipulation which is done by the whales. However they never complained when BTC reached $20000 and ETH reached $1400.

I don't think there is 1 or 2 whales which control the entire market. I just think it mostly is a bunch of separate large traders which follow the same trades. When one whale shorts, they see the market reaction and they short also.

Back in November everyone was bullish because they assumed that $6K was the low and usually BTC has a bullish November month so they all went long on margin. But the large traders knew that since it failed to close on a weekly high we might get new lows, and they were correct.

I don't think this is manipuation.

I have always disagreed with the whale manipulations theory. Firstly, whales are not a group of people living in the same apartment, they are scattered all over the world, although it's likely a few know each other. I do not think they can always pool together and manipulate the price.
And also it's very risky with how the currency has grown, and considering the amount they have invested.

by your definition, anyone placing orders on the book is a manipulator because they are blocking the price from moving the other direction. who is a manipulator and who is not? if you place a 500 BTC sell order at $10k because you think the price will drop, that means you're manipulating the market now?

are whales not allowed to sell to lock in profits? such a free market, this!

when people blame things on manipulation, it usually means they're bagholding and demand was just too weak to cause price to rise. losing traders always look for anyone else to blame but themselves.


of course tiny shitcoins are getting pumped and dumped. what makes you think that can be applied to the bitcoin market?

there is never going to be any kind of proof of manipulation in the market, if there were any then authorities would have already arrested manipulators since it is illegal to something like that!

all we have are signs and guesses. for example when price tries to rise and everyone is ready and the market volume is behind the rise but you suddenly see big walls be placed against the rise and big dumps in big chunks happening, that can not be anything but manipulation of whales.
this is obviously more visible among altcoins. for example when a dead shitcoin suddenly starts mooning out of nowhere, that is obviously a manipulation.

The fact that there are whales in the cryptocurrency market is there just like you have said the Winklevoss twins you mention I really think as the time goes by and certain individuals will surely know about this market we can assume that they can form their own unity or views on the crypto space, There are well-known people that we known that can buy a ton of bitcoin the many celebrities, The billionaire and millionaire that are interested with cryptocurrency we can sure see some news about it we can not deny that they really exist just like the conspiracy that we have that there are Illuminati and there are society of secrets that we can conclude in the list of speculated whales, We can assume that politicians and business oligarchs can unite their resources in manipulating the market,

I am just stating the facts on what kind of people whales may be and concluded people that may have interest in this kind of market and people like these can have a certain advantage in manipulating the market if they feel like it, Even if this is just my speculation if we think of it there can be people that are owning many bitcoin in their deep pockets.

an established fact? based on what exactly? the musings of random posters on the speculation board? i'd love to see the "proof" underlying this fact.

over the years, i've seen many whales attempt to start pumps or selloffs with huge market orders. many times, i've also seen the market completely reject them and move in the other direction.

just like news, whales can't fundamentally dictate the market. bull whales can't stop a bear market. bear whales can't stop a bull market. those who try to manipulate in the wrong direction lose their money and cease to be whales. the smart ones move with the market and ride the trend.

the manipulation can not be done by exchanges alone because none of them control enough of the market to have that kind of influence. the days of Mt Gox and controlling 85-90% of the volume in one place are long gone. these days exchanges that are gigantic only control about 8% of the volume. and you can't do much with that percentage.

but manipulation exists, and even exchanges have ways of manipulating the market (they have access to the most amount of funds that anybody can have anyways!) but saying that is all there is (as some topics around here are doing) is just wrong.

I think that what we see on chart is not manipulated by 1 whale. Its battlefield where whale are fighting for their profit. I've seen many times those battles on market when big whale push price in one direction and suddenly price stopped high volume appeared and price moved in another direction forcing smaller whale to close position on loss boosting price even further. Its like watching a moovie for me.

I even heard opinion that every interval has its sponsor. On 5 min candles small whales are fighting for their profit pushing price in direction that they want. On 1h candles middle whales are fighting on bigger volumes. On 1d candles huge whales are pushing price pumping milions to set it how they want. Enormous whales are fighting on 1w candles, because only on that huge interval they can find volume that is right for them. Funny thing starts to happened when 5 min candle whale is trying to set price how he want it hitting in 1w whale wall.

I see trading more like poker table where n whales are fighting for big money and we, small traders are predicting which one of them will win to join and win with him.

So you tend to think that there are individuals with deep pockets (like the Winklevii twins mentioned above) who are actively buying and selling coins (as this is what control over the prices comes down to), right?


But how's that possible?

If there's only so much Bitcoin in the world? Unless a derivatives market orders of magnitude exceeding the spot market emerges, the institutional investors won't be able to make a dent or pierce a hole in the pockets of the whales, Bakkt or no Bakkt. But if paper bitcoins crowd out the real ones (i.e. the ones actually existing on the blockchain), this will severely undermine the whole idea behind cryptocurrency. All in all, it will turn Bitcoin into yet another fiat (with virtually unlimited issuance)

somtime, whale c'ant impact on prices if everyone hodl and buy. in this case whale will buy expensive

I agree with you--I've always pictured whales as the investors who buy and hold rather than the traders who look for short-term profit.  The two that come to mind immediately every time I hear the term 'whale' are the Winklevoss twins, who I assume still have massive amounts of bitcoin.  So I don't think whales are responsible for bitcoin's frequent and notorious price swings.  I think such swings are due to the combined market forces of thousands to millions of trades daily (don't know what the exact volume is).

It's easy to blame some unknown, faceless, and very wealthy culprits when the market takes a dive.  The same explanation gets made in the precious metals markets, except the metals people usually blame the government or JP Morgan for artificially keeping the price of gold/silver low.  I never bought that explanation, because it's too simplistic and there usually isn't any evidence given that it explains what's happening.

Half of the threads in this board (i.e. Speculation) is about whales manipulating the market in one way or another. But do they really exist and what is their real impact? If you want to find out, stay with me

I think it can be assumed as an established fact that there's some kind of market rigging going on at any time, which makes room for speculations about rich dudes moving prices as they see fit. Just as there is little doubt that some market manipulation is actually happening (though it remains to be seen how much of any given price move is in fact caused by this manipulation), there is also little doubt that quite a bunch of people involved in cryptocurrencies are extremely rich. But are they really behind every price manipulation out there?

My take is that they are not. Of course, when they start to sell, the price goes down, and when they go on a buying spree, the price goes up, which is kind of self-explanatory. With that said though, I'm strongly inclined to think that much of the market manipulation we see these days is caused by cryptocurrency exchanges alone. Indeed, you could say that they are the whales in question but I have to disagree with this point of view as they don't own the funds of their traders (though they definitely use these funds to massage the prices to their advantage)

What's your take on this?