Recently, it's become a concern that crypto whales can manipulate the market. Does this apply to altcoins only, or can these crypto whales manipulate all coins, including those with a higher market cap?
I won't deny the fact that manipulation does occur in crypto market because we have all seen some pump and dump coins.
The thing is, it requires a higher liquidity to manipulate cryptocurrencies and so whales decide to target coins which have a lower marktecap.
It becomes easier to them to manipulate the price and this is reason why we haven't seen large cap coins being manipulated.
Do you mean Bitcoin is not manipulated? Don't be so naive, because there are many ways to manipulate the market other than just using large amounts of money to manipulate. They can manipulate the market just by news and that is enough for them to make huge profits.
Remember when the Mt.gox news caused the bitcoin to be dumped? Remember the ETF news posted by cointelegraph or the SEC Twitter account being hacked?...all of these were blatant price manipulation, not accidents or random errors caused by employees. Any market will be manipulated and markets that are too free will be manipulated even more. Don't think that large caps can't be manipulated because there are many ways to manipulate the market.
Yes ofcourse, news does play a vitol role in market manipulation and has in fact been an easier way instead.
I was being specific to market manipulation by crypto whales using pump and dump schemes which require a higher liquidity.
But as you said, large cap coins can be manipulated too. We have also seen Elon Musk manipulating Dogecoins like a piece of cake just using twitter.
So yeah, crypto whales do have that power to manipulate any coin.