https://cryptomaton.medium.com/how-the-media-controls-your-bags-77bf106e932d https://cryptomaton.medium.com/ CyberPunkMetalHead Top Writer and co-founder of Algo Trading Platform — AESIR. https://twitter.com/cryptomatonblog How the media controls your bags https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-21/dimon-calls-out-cryptocur... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-02/jpmorgan-executes-its-fir... https://github.com/CyberPunkMetalHead/bitcoin-bot-buy-if-elon-tweets https://twitter.com/Bitboy_Crypto https://twitter.com/search?q=%23LUNC Screaming into a Megaphone is still one of the most efficient ways of making yourself heard in front of an audience. In traditional media, the system of information control was essentially that. Some people had a megaphone, and the rest would listen. The only difference now is that the general public is allowed to participate in the dissemination of information, some even have their own megaphones, but the process remains largely the same. This article is a deep-dive into how media and notable individuals control and influence the price of crypto assets. #1 Uses their position to influence media, plays long and short J.P. Morgan is especially guilty of this. Anyone else that’s not J.P. Morgan would see the insides of a jail cell within a fortnight if they gave half as many mixed signals when it comes to their stance on crypto as J.P. For instance, on September 21st Jamie Dimon, the CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase calls “crypto tokens like Bitcoin a decentralized ponzi scheme”. Same day bitcoin drops over 7% as people obviously sell due to the FUD. Of course, J.P’s followers and maxis are only too happy to amplify their leader’s message within their own social following, adding to the FUD. You’ll notice that it’s usually dumb comments like that, and this is one of the dumbest ones, that have a real effect in the market. The more “simple” and emotionally charged a message is, the more impact it tends to have. I’d leave old J.P. alone if this was their entire narrative, but it’s not. One month they will bash the entire crypto industry with outlandish blanket statements, while the next one they announce they have started working with crypto. They’ve been literally bashing crypto and buying it at the same time since 2013. The manipulation here is blatant. Just a couple of months later, on November 2nd 2022, J.P Morgan announced they executed their first DeFi trade using Polygon. When this news broke, it brought renewed confidence in the Polygon, with the setting the MATIC token on a bull run gaining over 50% in just 2 days. When you’re as systemic as J.P, market Manipulation comes as second nature. Everything their CEO says publicly is instantly picked up by the world’s biggest media giants and gets disseminated within miuntes. At this stage the media can choose to publish this story or not. Even a mediocre journalist is able to tell when they’re sitting on a story that will move the market. Would they be not to place an order in the predictable position before the story gets published? But enough of J.Ps blatant market manipulation and their CEO’s lack of a morals, let’s crack on with the next example. #2 Direct influence via social media, but they’re a permabull Elon Musk and Dogecoin. You know what I’m talking about. Elon Musk has been known, on multiple occasions to influence the price of Dogecoin via his tweets. This is a lot different in sentiment compared to J.P. Morgan, and a lot more nuanced too, but the outcome is a similar one. Here is a Tweet from Elon on November first: — and here’s Dogecoin pumping 62% in just over 12 hours. There are many examples of Elon’s Tweets affecting the price of Dogecoin, so many in fact that last time I was looking into this, I actually coded a crypto trading bot that buys based on Elon’s tweets. I’ve open sourced it, and I made it for fun, I probably wouldn’t recommend basing your entire trading strategy on one man’s Tweets. What both Elon and J.P’s CEO have in common is what once they make a statement, it gets immediate media attention, pretty much guaranteeing that every word they make public, gets viral. The next category of individuals is a different one. 3# Organises pump and dump groups, dumps liquidity on you This category has not a single person or organisation behind it, but the result is usually similar, at least in the short term. Pump and Dump groups are private social media groups where a few individuals inform 10s of thousands of other people that they will long or short a certain asset at a certain time. The huge spike in volume usually results in quick pump, followed by an even quicker dump. Here is an example of a Pump and Dump that took place on Jan 1st 2018 for BANCOR: As you can see below, the market quickly spiked up over 30% only to dump back to baseline in the following 30 minutes. Very few people actually make money from pump and dumps. Usually, the organisers of the pump and dumps are the only ones who make any money, and everyone else in that group who contribute to the pump are just there so the organisers can dump thee bags they’ve been stashing days in advance on them. After a pump and dump, the market usually remains un-affected in the long term. #4 Gets paid to shill to their own following, also dumps on their bags on you Shills are usually influencers who are just so excited to share “this next project that will definitely 100x” with you. Shills will say or do anything to get you to buy a certain coin. Many cryptocurrency shills have been known to hold bags of the coins they’re shilling (for obvious reasons). But there’s one shill out there who’s made an entire career out of it. Enter BitBoy Crypto — a shill for hire. The guy’s been getting paid to promote tens of dead shitcoins that eventually end up in the massive dump of dead crypto projects. Shoutout to Twitter user ZachXBT who did an ROI on many of the assets the BitBoy crypto shilled. The sheet below shows how most of them are now dead projects: #5 Shills their bags using bot farms, dumps liquidity on you This one is obviously harder to pinpoint so there won’t be any concrete examples. Bot farms are collections of tens of thousands of autonomous social media bots, with the a single purpose — shill a certain coin in an attempt to create market movement around it. Naturally, this is a lot harder to prove, but you don’t need to dig far in order to find evidence of bot farms being used to shill a certain project. For instance, take a look at Twitter’s #LUNC hashtag. There are thousands of accounts, some big, many small that all say essentially the same things: LUNC to reach $1, LUNC will make everyone rich, Like if you believe in LUNC. Just to be clear, LUNC will do no such thing, as it’s a dead project. Yes it will occasionally pump, but that will most likely be the result of organised pump and dumps or shills just like the one above. To sum up: The is a significant amount of market manipulation in crypto. The main actors are: Global Banks and financial institutions, Notable public persons, Influencers, Shills and pump and dump groups. Anyone who can manipulate the market for their own personal gain, will probably do so. People are emotional beings, therefore the market reacts to emotional news. Next time you see come across a piece of information that compels you to act in a certain way, whether bullish or bearish, stop and ask yourself: Is this FUD or FOMO? Would this be interpreted by the general population as FUD of FOMO? Is this likely to be widely circulated? Does it use emotional language or is matter-of-factly? Is it written in a way that it almost compels you to act? These questions may help avoid market traps as well as allow you to predict if / how a market might react to the news that just broke, allowing you the freedom to play your own way.