Is It Easy to Manipulate the Crypto Market?: Cointelegraph and BlackRock BTF ETF

On June 15, 2023, BlackRock, one of the leading providers of investment, advisory, and risk management solutions, applied for a spot Bitcoin ETF (a Bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund that can issue publicly traded securities). Immediately after the announcement, Bitcoin reacted with rapid growth.

However, this is the time when the SEC is actively fighting with Coinbase and Binance, the two biggest crypto exchanges. The hype around the BlackRock application calms down, and it, in turn, impacts the Bitcoin price, which soon drops to the previous levels.

Here, you can see a clear example of how much the price of the major crypto depends on external factors. What if somebody uses this dependence to manipulate the price of a crypto asset? In this case, we continue talking about Bitcoin because manipulating its price can deliver really high profits.

It all started on October 16, 2023, when Cointelegraph tweeted that the Securities and Exchange Commission approved BlackRock’s ETF.

Cointelegraph didn’t give any link to the source of the information, and it was not needed: Bitcoin reacted immediately with a surge.

It didn’t take long before a BlackRock representative contacted Cointelegraph with a claim that the tweet was a FAKE.

Soon after that, Cointelegraph removed the original tweet and published another tweet with apologies. Bitcoin reacts immediately with a plunge.

Cointelegraph performed a promised investigation and posted a report on it on their website. However, the course of the events has already been reproduced on social media, so there is nothing new in there except for some more screens from their Slack and Telegram channels.

Cointelegraph claims it was a mistake, while many believe it was an intentional market manipulation with the aim of earning. Where is the truth?

Was it a mistake of Cointelegraph or rather a smart market manipulation?

According to CoinGlass data, over $98 million were liquidated in short positions, which is logical.

But who won the game?

Rollbit, a crypto trading platform and online casino, posted it under one of Cointelegraph’s tweets asking if this was Cointelegraph indeed. What does this screen tell us?

Somebody with an account named Cointelegraph entered a BTC long position of $50,000 at 50x leverage. The position was open when Bitcoin was priced at $27,774 and exited the position when BTC was $30,274, with a profit of $2,250,800. Surprisingly, it all happened before the tweet with apologies was posted.

Did somebody from the Cointelegraph team post the fake news intentionally to earn on the pump? X (former Twitter) is full of memes like this.

There may be other major market players involved

But let’s be more critical and think: how realistic is this indeed?

Cointelegraph has been present in the market for over a decade since the crypto start. Since then, it has been one of the main sources of information about the crypto industry. I am sure that these guys know very well how it would turn out if they tried to manipulate the market and then benefit from it in such an open way.

Would they risk their reputation for that?

Would they face a risk of being jailed for insider trading and market manipulation? The SEC doesn’t joke in such cases, and the “proofs” are supposedly there.

I doubt. In my opinion, there was somebody who could benefit from this situation, and this somebody was trusted by Cointelegraph enough to publish any news provided by this source without further verification.

Did Cointelegraph really make that infamous trade with a profit of over $2,500,000?

That would be too uncareful and too evident, especially considering that the trade was made under the news outlet’s name. I think that for now, there are many facts to be unveiled, and we still have to find out who were the major players in this game.

How?

I believe that the user named Cointelegraph is not the only one who benefited from this situation. Step by step, we will learn about others who earned millions within that hour when the Bitcoin price was pumped and dumped. And the probability that those are the ones behind all the fuss is very high.

Meanwhile, the SEC reminds traders and investors that it is not worth trusting everything that you see on the internet, and it is always necessary to double-check all information with reliable resources.