Bitcoin Price Manipulation: Binance CEO Reveals Truth About Exchanges Manipulating Prices

Bitcoin (BTC) rallying is always a boon for exchanges: more trading volume means more revenue for an exchange. And if there is much hype around the increasing price, it builds the zeal for speculation that attracts both new and old participants, which, again, beefs up the bottom line of exchanges.

But some traders would often find fault with exchanges whenever there's a sharp fall in crypto prices. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao or commonly known in the crypto community as CZ, would want to keep prices high as much as possible. That's perhaps why his Malta-based exchange has a supply-reducing tactic that "burns" existing Binance Coins or BNB in circulation every quarter to bolster prices. BNB is the native token of Binance.

And when it comes to Bitcoin, CZ would prefer the top crypto to be trading at buoyant prices too, and he had made attempts in the past to stir up trading during gloomier times for the crypto.

When Bitcoin couldn't fulfill the 4chan prophecy meme, a trending topic in the crypto world late last year, of price reaching $16,000 by October, CZ brushed it off and resorted to injecting hopes to his followers' minds by tweeting:

"Lol, price predictions are easy. It's just hard to be right about the timing. We will see $16k soon-ish. 1.4 billion people working on it as we speak."

But despite this, BTC proceeded to drop 17.5% in November and a further 5% decline in December, which was outside of the norm considering how the last month of the year has always been positive for Bitcoin.

BTC is trading below $10,000 once again, and some investors are not too happy with the current situation after most of them expect Bitcoin to sustain a third week of trading in the green. Over the weekend, BTC fell to a weekly low of $9,642, which roused the conversation about price manipulation by exchanges.

On a Twitter thread about the topic, CZ had this to say, "Yeah, if exchanges could impact price. They would be super high. Exchanges do much better when prices are high."

CZ also poked fun at everyone upset about BTC's recent retracement and called the attention to the crypto's current yield.

"#Bitcoin does a healthy retrace, suddenly everyone in #crypto is a scammer. What's the yield YTD?"

If investors take time to calculate how much BTC appreciated YTD, that's approximately a 165% increase.