Is Bitcoin’s Price Being Manipulated?
Published February 3, 2026
by Joel Bomgar
YouTube Video Transcript
Is Bitcoin's price being manipulated?
No, no, and no. Bitcoin's price is not
being manipulated. Now, that doesn't
mean it's impossible for somebody to buy
or sell or something like that. But at
the end of the day, Bitcoin is a
trillionoll asset. You can't manipulate
a trillion dollar asset unless you're
throwing around tens of billions of
dollars. And nobody's doing that. the
price of Bitcoin is going up and down
because people like me and you and banks
and insurance companies and all that are
buying and selling it. So if the price
is going down, it's because there's more
people selling than buying. And if the
price is going up, it's because more
people are buying than selling. So yeah,
the price is also affected by people
using leverage. But guess what? Leverage
works both ways. If they're using
leverage to buy Bitcoin on the way up,
it can make the price go up a little
faster than it would otherwise go. But
also the same on the way down. If
they're using leverage on the way down,
it can make the price accelerate down to
the downside as well. But again, they're
not manipulating the the marketplace.
They're just doing exactly what all
markets do, which is they're betting
that it's going to go one way or
another. And when people say the the
marketplace is being manipulated, first
of all, they only ever say it when the
asset price is going down. You will
never hear anybody say the market is
being manipulated when Bitcoin's price
is going up. But why not? Why wouldn't
somebody be being manipulating it up?
And the answer is because they only
don't like it when it's going down. And
so their positive is being manipulated
when it's going down, but they're fine
if it's going up. So everything's fine
and everything's normal when it's going
up, but somehow they're positive it's
being manipulated when it's going down.
Again, that's not true. There's just
buying and selling going on in a
voluntary economy with a ton of people
in it with a ton of people making major
decisions to buy and sell a currency on
a 247 basis worldwide. This is not like
some tiny US thing. The US has like four
or 5% of the world population. Bitcoin
is a global asset. Everybody acts like
it's a US asset. It's not a US asset.
It's a global asset. It goes up and down
because somebody in China and India
decides to buy or sell it. And we don't
even know why half the time. But
generally, if you hear people saying the
market's being manipulated, it's not
true. The market is too big to
manipulate in Bitcoin. And people are
like, "Yeah, but they're just going to
sell it and make the price go down and
then they're going to buy it back for
cheaper." Well, what do you think
happens when they try to buy it back for
cheaper? It pushes the price right back
above the price they paid for it. You
can't game a market by buying and
selling into that market once the market
reaches a certain scale. It just doesn't
work because no matter how much you
dump, the price goes down. But as soon
as you try to buy back all the thing you
dumped, the price goes right back up.
You can't end up with more of that asset
that way. If you could, everyone would
do that with everything. They buy up,
you know, the majority of the shares of
any company. They, you know, sell them
all off and then buy them all right
back. The problem is you can't do that
because you push the price down when you
sell them off, but you push it right
back up when you buy them back and you
always end up with fewer of those shares
because some people are always smart
enough to buy those cheap shares on the
way down. And then when you try to buy
them, you know, push the price up uh as
you buy them back, you end up with less.
So even if the entire Bitcoin market was
made up of two Bitcoin and I owned one
of them and someone owned the other one,
if I sold all my one Bitcoin into the
market and then tried to buy it all
back, I would end up with like half a
Bitcoin. There's just no way to do that.
Not with an asset that has any scale. So
the price is not being manipulated. Uh
people always say that because they
don't want to accept reality. The
reality is humans are buying and selling
Bitcoin. Humans are fickle. Humans make
irrational decisions. Humans do dumb
things from time to time. Humans also
often have a herd mentality when it
involves investing, meaning they do what
everybody else is doing, even if what
everybody else is doing doesn't make
sense. All of those things happen and
those things explain why Bitcoin's price
does what it does. So, the pra the the
drop last night to $60,000 and one penny
last night, if you went and analyzed
every single thing, every single buy and
sell that went into the price dropping,
you'd find that it was a bunch of
people. It was people getting liquidated
on bets they made above $100,000. It was
people freaking out, panic selling. I
mean, it was like everything. But you're
not going to find some, you know, big
bad somebody behind a curtain
manipulating the price. You're going to
find hundreds of millions of people
making decisions. And the aggregate
effect of those hundreds of millions of
people making decisions is the price is
either going up or down depending on
whether demand is higher than supply or
supply is higher than demand. That's how
markets work. It's how all markets work.
It's that straightforward. Uh so all you
can do is respond to the actions of
other humans, but there's no benefit of
claiming that, you know, somehow the
market's being manipulated against your
favor. It's just not. It's not being
manipulated. Don't worry about that. Uh,
just buy Bitcoin and hold on to it for
as long as you
Disclaimer:
The content provided in this post is for educational purposes only. It should not be considered financial, investment, or trading advice. I am not a licensed financial advisor, and all opinions expressed are my own. Always conduct your own research and consult with a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions. Investing in Bitcoin or any other assets carries risk, and you should never invest more than you can afford to lose.
Subscribe to Joel's Friday Roundup ✉️
Stay current with the latest bitcoin insights with the Friday Roundup newsletter — Joel's latest posts from the week, wrapped up in a single email for easy viewing.
NOTHING for sale. No SPAM ever. Unsubscribe anytime.