Is Bitcoin’s Price Being Manipulated?

Published February 3, 2026

  • 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

Originally recorded 2/3/26

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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.

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