Institutional Buy-Ups Centralize Bitcoin and Enable Exchange Manipulation

I think someone was right: as large funds relentlessly buy crypto, Bitcoin's price dynamics are becoming more centralized and easier to influence. I can already see it in how exchanges move prices with little resistance. It would have made sense to build a lot of shorts on HPL — they pushed the price from 109 to 123 in three small-volume stages. These kinds of moves smell like bubble inflation.

Today it’s harder to crash Bitcoin back to 50K the way it used to be, since ETFs can’t be exposed as scams without legal consequences. Yet manipulating prices remains fairly straightforward. I saw Bybit pull a wick downward recently that I haven’t seen on other venues — clearly aimed at triggering longs. That’s classic exchange-driven manipulation in plain view.