Is The Crypto Market Being Suppressed?

Hello and welcome to Coin Bureau's official podcast channel.

My name is Guy and if you're seeking unbiased in-depth information about Bitcoin,

cryptocurrencies, Web3 and all manner of related topics,

then you've come to the right place.

I hope you enjoy today's episode.

Have you ever heard of the Bart Simpson pattern?

Bart Simpson.

It's when a chart jumps suddenly in one direction,

chops sideways, and then snaps back to the previous level.

Kind of funny, right?

Well, maybe not.

Bart patterns can actually signal market manipulation,

and they've been appearing a lot lately.

I could rubble.

That's why today we're going to answer the question on everyone's mind.

Is the crypto market being manipulated?

And if so, who is behind it?

And when will it ever end?

Well, let's get into it.

Before we begin though, you do need to know that I'm not a financial advisor

and nothing in this video is financial or investment advice.

It's educational content intended to inform you about crypto market manipulation.

If you enjoy content like this, then prove it by punching that like button.

Now, have you ever looked at a crypto?

Waited for what felt like the perfect moment to ape in,

sat back expecting gains only for the chart to move the opposite way?

You're not alone.

Crypto traders everywhere face this constantly.

Even when a trade looks like a winner on paper,

it could go against you in practice.

And that isn't always down to sheer bad luck,

or ineptitude on your part.

Behind the scenes, large players pull the strings

to make sure your money ends up in their pockets.

This is market manipulation, and it's not exclusive to crypto.

In fact, it's a tale as oldest time.

With examples, stretching back centuries.

But crypto is the easiest market for the bad guys to manipulate.

Why is that though?

Well, in short, it's because crypto is still new

compared to other asset classes.

The result is that market surveillance is far weaker.

And it's made even more difficult by the pseudo-anonymous nature of the crypto industry.

While major progress has been made in recent years

to build the regulatory framework crypto needs to thrive,

it's still very much a work in progress.

For now, great areas remain.

And market manipulation knows it.

And it's easy to manipulate the crypto market

because liquidity is so much thinner.

Mainly because it's spread across many exchanges,

blockchains, and protocols.

This makes spreads on buying and selling wider.

For those who don't know, the spread is simply the difference

between the price sellers are asking

and the price buyers are willing to pay.

Wider spreads can lead to wild price swings,

creating opportunities for large players

to exploit air gaps in liquidity.

They can manipulate order books to push prices up or down

for their own profit.

Even moderately sized orders can move prices significantly

if they hit these air gaps.

This is especially true when it comes to newer cryptos,

which are the easiest to manipulate

because they're the least liquid.

For just a few thousand dollars,

anyone can create a project promising to be the next big thing.

This lures retail investors hoping for a ride to the moon,

only for their investment to collapse while insiders cash out.

It's not just low liquidity either.

Most crypto traders are retail investors,

ordinary people like you and me.

And yet, the largest share of trading volume

comes from the so-called smart money,

which is a flattering term for large investors with lots of cash.

Then because they're the smart money,

that apparently makes us the dumb money.

The point is, smart money wields far more influence

on the market than dumb money.

And the worst part is that the dumb money

is actually pretty predictable.

Broadly speaking, we all follow the same news,

the same technical indicators,

and react with the same emotions of fear and greed.

Smart money investors know this

and pull the strings to their advantage.

But it is important to note that not every will

is a market manipulator.

And many institutions and large players trade crypto OTC

to avoid moving the markets.

Logically, this suggests that wills

you trade public markets are potentially doing so

with the intention to manipulate and mislead fruit for thought.

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Now, this begs the question of how can you tell

if what you're seeing is genuine market activity

or just bad actors creating false impressions?

Thankfully, there are a number of chart patterns to watch for,

one of which we mentioned in the intro, the Bart Simpson.

To refresh your memory, the Bart pattern refers

to price action that looks eerily similar

to Bart's head and hairline.

It starts with a sudden move up,

the left side of Bart's head,

followed by a choppy sideways action,

his spiky hair, then ends with a sharp drop back down

to the previous levels, the right side of his head.

There's also the inverse Bart pattern,

which is basically Bart upside down.

It starts with the sharp drop,

followed by choppy sideways action,

and then a sudden rise back up.

Bart patterns are assumed to be market manipulation

because this is exactly the kind of price action

that you'd expect from a group of whales

looking to profit off of retail investors.

A big jump or drop, distribution or accumulation,

and then another big drop or jump.

And Bart patterns mostly show up on short and medium timeframes

because it's easier to manipulate prices over short periods.

So how can you tell if a Bart pattern is manipulation

or just normal crypto volatility?

Well, just check two things.

The first is volume.

A Bart pattern usually shows a surge

during the initial move up or down,

which then tapers off during the sideways consolidation phase.

Once volume is low enough,

then the price snaps back to its starting point,

accompanied by another spiky volume.

The volume tells the story more clearly than the chart.

The initial surge, well, that's bad actors

pushing the price up or down.

The low volume during consolidation,

retail investors getting caught up in the move.

And the final surge, that's the price reversing

as manipulators cash in.

The second thing to watch for is a market catalyst

or lack thereof.

Simply put, if there's no obvious reason

for traders to be rushing to trade the crypto in question,

ask yourself, why is the price moving like that?

If no clear reason exists,

it's likely manipulative whales trying to catch you out.

Note though that sometimes it can be hard to find this catalyst

and it's important to remember that macro catalysts

can also affect crypto prices as well.

So it's not just crypto catalysts.

Now while Bart patterns are worth watching,

there are other ways that malicious whales

try to take as much money as possible

from the rest of us with classic pump and dump scheme

being one of the most frequent.

Another manipulation tactic is called spoofing,

which is a bit more nuanced.

Basically, it involves placing fake orders

to influence the market's direction.

Whales place massive orders without ever intending

to fill them, then they withdraw them

before they can be executed.

If that sounds a bit pointless, well, think again.

By placing massive orders, often worth tens of millions

of dollars, whales send false signals of high demand

at certain levels.

This illusion manipulates other traders' reactions,

making them buy or sell unnecessarily

and pushing prices to levels that benefit bad actors.

The worst part is that spoofing

is one of the hardest manipulation tactics to spot.

Detecting it usually requires digging through large amounts

of trading data and closely comparing bid

and ask prices with the order book itself.

Another common form of market manipulation

is wash trading.

This is when a bad actor repeatedly buys and sells

the same crypto to create fake activity,

inflating trading volume and making it seem

like there's high demand for their token.

This tricks investors into thinking

that the project has a bright future.

When in reality, it's probably been dead from the start.

But the additional buying pressure pushes the price up,

letting the bad actor rake in significant gains

before abandoning the project.

And the final manipulation tactic to watch for

is insider trading.

This is when individuals use non-public,

privileged information to take advantage of

or even manipulate the market.

These insiders may know about major upcoming milestones,

a new exchange listing or even negative news

like a key team member leaving.

They trade on this information before anyone else,

profiting when the news goes public and the market reacts.

The frustrating thing about insider trading

is just how hard it is to spot.

In many cases, it requires thorough investigations

into the trading history of the insiders.

And these investigations usually happen long after the fact.

The best way to avoid falling victim to insider trading

is to just stay alert.

If you see prices pumping or dumping

right before a roadmap deadline

or an upcoming announcement,

it's a sign the crypto project

is subject to insider trading.

The sudden accumulation or distribution

by a few wallets ahead of any news breaking out

is a big red flag.

Thankfully, other manipulation methods

are much easier to avoid.

And we'll come back to how you can do this

later in the video.

Okay, so by this point,

you know market manipulation takes many forms,

but you might be wondering who's behind it.

As noted earlier, the worst offenders tend to be whales.

Traders with deep pockets and advanced knowledge

who deliberately move the market in their favor.

That said, most whales are just like us.

Crypto enthusiasts who love the tech

and want to make some money.

It's only a small subset of whales

that have turned to the dark side, so to speak.

Unsurprisingly, their true identities are rarely known.

That said, this smart money usually comes from four groups,

venture capitalists or VCs,

institutional investors, exchanges, yes, really,

and a handful of elite individual traders.

Let's start with VCs.

Venture capital has become a key part

of the crypto ecosystem.

And just like whales, most VCs are good for crypto.

They provide huge amounts of market liquidity

and fund early stage projects,

offering strategic guidance to fuel their growth,

essentially, they nurture innovation

while taking high risk, high reward bets

in exchange for tokens or equity.

However, not all VCs play fair.

Some with large stakes in crypto projects

use their positions to influence prices,

aiming to maximize profit regardless of the cost to others.

They don't care about the tech.

They just want to rake in as much money as possible.

The second cohort of manipulators are institutional investors.

Once again, institutional investors

are a good thing for the space.

They help drive trading volumes and liquidity,

serving as a lifeblood of the crypto market.

However, some institutions use their size and scale

to create artificial price levels,

deliberately swaying market sentiment

and triggering waves of buying or selling

among other investors.

Perhaps the most surprising group of bad actors

is crypto exchanges.

Most exchanges are hyper focused on regulatory compliance,

especially as rules around crypto tighten globally.

In this new era, no exchange wants to be left behind.

Some exchanges though, especially poorly regulated ones,

have been known to trade against their own users.

To be clear, the exchange itself

isn't always directly manipulating the market.

Often, it's traders on the exchange doing the manipulation.

Poorly regulated exchanges simply provide a space

for these tactics.

Fortunately, crypto regulation has come a long way since then

and stricter market surveillance requirements

make this activity much easier to identify.

Unfortunately, unregulated and offshore exchanges

still pose a significant risk.

The final group of manipulators are the worst offenders

and that's elite traders.

These are a small number of experienced,

well-capitalized individuals,

anticipating the moves of dumb money like us.

Many use their knowledge in capital

simply to find the best entry and exit points, which is fair.

But others act maliciously,

manipulating market sentiment to boost profits

at the expense of retail traders

called by FUD and FOMO.

All right, folks, let's be honest.

Everything we've covered so far is pretty scary.

It's not nice to know that there's sometimes someone

in the shadows pulling the strings,

making sure they win while you lose.

So the big question is, will crypto market manipulation

ever end?

Well, I hate to break it to you,

but a short answer is no.

No, no, no, no.

At least not completely.

And that's just because market manipulation

exists wherever money and humans intersect.

And that's simply because human greed has no limits.

That's why market manipulation won't just persist

in crypto, but in every financial market.

Stocks, bonds, real estate, art, gold, forex, you name it.

As we mentioned earlier though,

manipulation is easier to do in the crypto market

for the time being.

And this will continue to be the case

until the crypto market matures.

Market manipulation should also become less common

as crypto regulation improves.

Stronger markets your valence and clearer rules

for exchanges will make it harder for will

to exploit ordinary traders.

And as the crypto market matures,

liquidity will deepen, making it harder

and less profitable to move prices.

Investors will also become more aware of these tactics

and learn to avoid them.

Pain is a brutal but effective teacher.

Like everything else in life,

saying educated is key to your success.

And now let's wrap things up.

Let's look at how you can avoid falling victim

to the very tactics designed to trip you up.

First, be on the lookout for any signs

of manipulation on the price charts,

like the Bart pattern.

The charts should look normal, not choppy,

especially on longer timeframes.

Second, do some basic research on the cryptos

that you want to trade or buy.

Look for plenty of holders, the more the merrier.

And make sure no single wallet holds

an outsized share of tokens.

Check that liquidity is locked

and review besting schedules to avoid sudden token dumps.

Third and most importantly,

base your decisions on your own judgment.

Not hype, no matter how noisy it gets.

Remember that market manipulators like to play on emotions.

They will push prices up or down to the point

that you can't help but buy or sell.

Some will even go as far as paying for articles

to push the narrative.

Also, don't forget that one of the best ways

to protect yourself is to trade on a reputable exchange

and stick to large, highly-liquid pairs.

Recall that smaller cryptos with lower liquidity

are easier to move.

That said, even large cryptos, including BTC,

can be manipulated.

So no matter what you trade, stay vigilant

and never take price movements at face value.

Do your own research, analyze everything and act carefully.

Do this and you'll not only prove

you're not the dumb money we'll expect,

but you might even outsmart the smart money.

Now with that, that's going to be all for me for today.

If you're wondering what trends to watch out for though,

check out the video right over here.

And if you want to learn about six major risks

to Bitcoin in 2026, well, check out that video right over here.

Thank you so much for watching

and I'll see you again very soon.

It's Lewis signing off.

Hello, Guy again.

Before you go, if you have a moment,

please do rate and review us.

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Okay, that's all for this episode.

Thank you for listening and see you again soon.