BITMEX Owner Accused of ETH Market Manipulation

Traders on a losing streak are often pointing to market manipulation by exchanges and whales to justify or explain their losses. However, on September 11th, a reddit page vehemently attacked BITMEX, the behemoth of margin trading in the crypto-sphere with accusations of heavily influencing the ETH price drop since introducing the ETH/USD perpetual swap in August 2018. The swap in question allows traders to short ETH with leverage by depositing Bitcoin in their account.

The current backlash on the EthTrader Reddit page, really emerged at the confluence of two events, the blame from the investors towards Bitmex’s addition of the ETH/USD swap and the language used by their CEO Arthur Hayes, who disgraced Ethereum by calling it “ bigger shitcoin than the dollar”.

Investors criticizing Bitmex are insisting that the additional futures market brought further downward pressure on ETH price, which would have accelerated the price decline from $415 to a year-to-date low in a matter of weeks.

While still sitting at the 2nd rank in the AltDex 100 Index, benchmark index of large-cap cryptocurrencies, markets have witnessed more than $30 million in ETH sold through Blockchain projects during the same weeks of decline, this event skyrocketed directly with the decline of ETH as projects ran out of funds raised through ICOs during the 2017 bull run.

In fact, the price of ETH has blatantly under performed the overall crypto market and this trend shows no momentum-reversal. Stuck between two bearish forces, ICO dumping funds and accumulation of shorts currently 202 000 ETH sold short, Ethereum faces tough times given its direct association with ICOs, which have massively been deceiving in 2018.

Originally published at ChainReport.