Elusive nuance. Like finding a specific atom in a hay stack.

Gm

Good morning

What's he's saying at that moment?

Soooo much fun

Good Morning 🧁 💋 #gm #bakestr

Whenever a crypto bro joins the Indian Bitcoin group, he gets a warm welcome, such that he questions his existence. Yet he lingers around, just to find out he is on the wrong planet. Will he stay around ? Will he exit? Will we be kind to humans ?

Yeah, we were talking about this too.

We voluntarily ran a kids area the previous two years, which I think was hugely additive to the overall experience.

Moar kids, moar adults (wives, partners), moar ticket sales.

I couldn’t agree more!

In addition to that, maybe a kids (under 18) talk.

An ice cream truck too would be nice.

Water cooling fountain.

thoughtful feedback.

GF and I may be there in a couple weeks 🤘

Wow, Que bueno! Me alegria mucho la entrevista, Que amable su amigo. Mi esposa es boliviana y estoy triste cuanto dificil la situacion alli por su familia y todos. #Bolivia necesita Bitcoin tmbn!

im so curious what you guys do for a living...

Great compilation of things to consider before becoming a nomad! Thanks for considering my point of view.

Looks good. Gonna have a play with that too :-)

This is what I need to do for my wife’s home bakery…

Seem like off-grid solar would be pretty useful there, considering there isn't the low sun winter season!? Even with minimal batteries.

At this point, the UN is basically a well decorated suggestion box.

Sats a beauty, have solar power for it

Very cool!

🤙

Only for the uneducated. 🫣🤣🧡

🎯 The Invisible Hands Behind Bitcoin: How Market Makers Quietly Control the Price

If you’ve ever looked at the Bitcoin chart and thought, “This makes no sense” — you’re right. What looks like chaos is often orchestrated. While the crypto world celebrates decentralization and “free markets,” the reality is murkier. Behind many of Bitcoin’s wild swings are market makers, whales, and even exchanges themselves, subtly (or not so subtly) steering the price.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s a pattern. And it’s been happening for over a decade.

🧰 Classic Manipulation Tactics

Let’s start with the usual suspects:

Spoofing: Fake buy or sell orders create false demand or panic. In 2017, an anonymous whale nicknamed Spoofy manipulated Bitfinex’s order books with massive spoof orders. No one knows who he was — but traders tracked his behavior for months.

Wash Trading: Exchanges faking volume by buying and selling to themselves. Bitwise reported in 2019 that 95% of crypto trading volume was fake. Yes, 95%.

Pump-and-Dump Schemes: Coordinated social hype, then a rug pull. Still common in altcoins, but BTC isn't immune.

Bear Raids: Dumping thousands of BTC to trigger cascading liquidations. In 2019, one 5,000 BTC market sell on Bitstamp led to $250M in liquidations on BitMEX.

Front-Running: Exchanges or insiders trading ahead of big orders — an invisible tax on every retail move.

🕳️ Down the Rabbit Hole: Advanced and Hidden Tactics

What you don’t see is even worse.

Stop-Loss Hunting: Price pushed to obvious stop zones, liquidating small traders, then bouncing.

Long/Short Squeezes: Whales deliberately cause liquidation cascades by leveraging market structure.

Cross-Exchange Price Engineering: Manipulate BTC price on a small exchange that affects global indices.

Fake News & FUD Campaigns: Twitter rumors. Telegram raids. Even fake press releases.

Exchange Collusion or Insider Trading: Who polices the exchanges when they are the ones trading?

🐳 Case Studies That Should Scare You

Mt. Gox Bots (2013): “Willy” and “Markus” bought BTC with fake money. Pushed price from $150 to $1,000.

Tether & Bitfinex (2017): Academic research shows newly printed USDT was used systematically to buy dips — possibly inflating BTC’s rally to $20k.

Upbit (Korea): Prosecuted for $226B in fake trades.

Operation Token Mirrors (2024): FBI sting revealed market makers offering wash-trading and pump services as a business.

🧠 This Isn’t Just Theory — Regulators Know It Too

The SEC refused to approve a spot BTC ETF for years, citing manipulation risk.

The CFTC and DOJ have brought spoofing and wash trading cases — and are still investigating.

The EU’s MiCA law now treats crypto market abuse the same as securities fraud.

💣 And Retail? You're the Exit Liquidity

While whales dump, retail buys the dip.

In both the Terra-LUNA crash (May 2022) and FTX collapse (Nov 2022), blockchain data showed whales exiting while small holders were buying. The net result? Whales got out. You got rekt.

Bitcoin’s volatility isn’t just “the market doing its thing.” Often, it’s someone making you believe it’s safe — until it isn’t.

🔍 The Good News: It’s Getting Harder to Hide

Nasdaq’s SMARTS surveillance system is now used by major exchanges.

Proof-of-Reserves audits are more common post-FTX.

Whale alerts and on-chain tools let savvy traders track big moves.

EU regulations (MiCA) now criminalize manipulation across Europe.

But until enforcement is global and airtight, Bitcoin remains manipulable. The game is still tilted — and the house usually wins.

🧭 Final Thought: Don’t Be Naïve

Bitcoin is powerful. It’s freedom tech. But its price is not pure. It’s not just a function of adoption and demand. It’s shaped, poked, prodded, and occasionally hijacked by entities with deeper pockets, faster bots, and better information than you.

Until transparency, regulation, and decentralization catch up, every trader should assume one thing:

The market is rigged — but sometimes you can still play the game.

Thank you for the interesting article. It was very helpful in understanding the nostr ecosystem.

I have one question to confirm if my understanding is correct.

Assuming all clients adhere to the Outbox Model (NIP-65), and all relays store and serve requested notes completely, users should theoretically be able to find 100% of the posts authored by people they follow and the reactions to those specific posts without guessing or manually adding relays (ignoring the bootstrapping problem of how to initially find the NIP-65 event for someone I follow, let's assume that's solvable through reasonable guessing or indexers).

However, my understanding is that finding an original post (let's call it Post A) when someone I follow replies to or quotes it cannot be achieved 100% solely through the Outbox Model of the person I follow. It seems dependent on NIP-10 hints (p and e tags).

Specifically, is this process correct?

When my follow replies/quotes, their event must include hints (like a p-tag for the original author, let's call them Author B, and an e-tag for Post A).

My client finds the reply/quote on my follow's write relays (as per NIP-65).

My client extracts Author B's pubkey (from the p-tag) and Post A's event ID (from the e-tag).

My client then needs to find Author B's NIP-65 event (facing the bootstrapping issue again).

Then, my client must query Author B's write relays to fetch Post A itself (using its event ID).

And additionally, query Author B's read relays to find other reactions (likes, zaps, other replies) to Post A (since Author B is tagged in those reactions).

Is this multi-step process, relying on hints and the original author's NIP-65 relays, the correct way this interaction works within the Outbox Model's scope?