Bitcoin Price Was Manipulated Before Futures Settlement Dates: Report

A new report emerged  in the Bitcoin latest news, showing that the price of the most dominant cryptocurrency was somehow artificially held before the launch of the futures settlement. The research carried out by Arcane Research outlines that the Bitcoin price was manipulated because of the settlement dates – which is why BTC dropped over the past week.

According to the findings from the Arcane Research reported by the Norwegian crypto news outlet Kryptografen on September 24, the CME Group Bitcoin futures settlement dates appear to negatively influence the BTC markets.

When analyzing the price behaviour for BTC from January 2018 to August 2019, the researchers found that Bitcoin price was manipulated and that it dropped 75% of the times before CME issued payouts. As you probably know, CME was one of the first operators launching the Bitcoin futures in December 2017. Since then, the interest for BTC peaked, and this year it continued, showing frequent highs for trading volumes.

Arcane published the numbers hours before Bitcoin dropped by 15% and bottomed out at $8,000 – a shock for many traders and analysts. The event happened to occur days before a major settlement date (Friday, when 50% of the open interest in Bitcoin options is set to expire). This is how the Bitcoin price was manipulated.

This week’s timing is also very conspicuous because of the launch of a new futures product from the institutional trading platform Bakkt. As the recent Bitcoin news updates show, executives have already claimed the effectiveness of the product in helping markets with price discovery – despite its volumes being very low.

As the company noted on social media, the unexpected drop in the price of BTC is a sign that the market is finding its true value. Arcane, however, believes that the Bitcoin price was manipulated and that the behavior is highly suspect.

“The figures thus support a hypothesis that the bitcoin price is manipulated in advance of CME settlement,” Kryptografen concluded, adding that “the figures do not say anything about ‘deliberate manipulation’ or, for example, only a result of investors’ strategy of hedging.”

In August this year, Arcane was all over the news for showing that Bitcoin’s market dominance was in fact over 90% – rather than the 70% reported by trackers.