Quote from: shinzai on December 10, 2017, 08:10:03 PM

Quote from: FrueGreads on December 08, 2017, 04:57:42 PM

As far as I know, bitcoin futures does not affect bitcoin price directly. When you buy buy futures, you can go short or long on bitcoin futures, and by that you expect the price to go down or up respectively, in order for you to have a profit (but you are not buying or selling bitcoin).

The "problem" with futures, is that you can now win money if the bitcoin price goes down. What everyone is saying" is that there is a great opportunity to buy bitcoin before the futures goes live, and by doing this you are making it's price go up (specially if you are a whale, like the Wall Street guys are). When futures go live, those guys can just short bitcoin, and at the same time sell the bitcoins they've bought before the futures went live. Since they have plenty of money, they might be able to have some influence on the bitcoin price, so by selling coins, they will be winning on the short they did on futures, and will cash out some profit out of the bitcoin sale as well.

After this they can go long on bitcoin futures, and at the same time buy bitcoin that is now at a shorter price, and again win on both sides. Of course this is not that linear, and the market will still be unpredictable, but this is a possible set up made by Wall Street whales, and this might be a way for the futures market to influence bitcoin price.

Thank you for a clear answer

I suspected this was the case, ie that futures trading itself has no impact on the bitcoin price, but rather adds an incentive to manipulate the bitcoin price.

However, is it not just as likely for the whales to go long & manipulate the price upwards as it is downwards?

Quote from: XinXan on December 08, 2017, 06:57:41 PM

Maybe but Wall Street whales aren't going to invest a lot of money into bitcoin simply because it's too volatile. If many of them work together they could do anything they want with bitcoin's price but that would be market manipulation which is illegal.

How is such a thing proven? has there been any cases where people have been found guilty?

Because I feel in order to not bet against (& screw up) each other A LOT of whales have to come together and bet in the same direction.

Well yea, plenty of cases. I feel that it would be much more obvious with bitcoin since the volume isn't really that high.
https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/trader-sentenced-in-spoofing-case-involving-market-manipulation

It's not easy to get caught but it's not impossible either.