Did Binance and Wintermute really just nuke the crypto market?

Or was it Trump’s tariffs?

Liquidation in the last 24hrs is looking like the largest crypto has ever seen as the numbers are not even available to the public.

Word on the street is that centralized exchanges don't give out exact liquidation numbers as they set rate limits on their APIs.

I am afraid that today real total liquidation is a lot more than $2B, by my estimation it should be at least around $8-10b. FYI, Bybit 24hr liquidation alone was $2.1B, As you can see in below screenshot, Bybit 24hr liquidations recorded on Coinglass was around $333m, however, this is not all of the liquidations. We have api limitation on how much feeds are pushed out per second. From my observation, other exchanges also practice the same to limit liquidation data. Moving forward, Bybit will start to PUSH all liquidation data. We believe in transparency.

Bybit Co-founder and CEO via X and you can guess that these exchanges are doing exactly what we've always thought of them to do.

A couple of days back, I wanted to put out an article on KuCoin exchange after seeing a certain news report but never got around to doing it but I guess now I can just throw it in here before proceeding.

Centralized exchanges and market makers are fucking us over, that's sort of their business model for the most profit. It's literally what we've been calling out for years and it's even worse now because they don't seem to give a shit that we know.

On KuCoin, this is a tier 2 exchange that isn't heavily talked about despite having over 30 million users, reportedly. It's one of those not heavy on KYC exchanges that I happen to have used in the past but it's also the most greenish casino capital.

This is an exchange that would literally list any shit regardless of if it's under a rock or an elephant’s butt. 90% of tokens I often saw on KuCoin always felt like they never really existed and were just IOUs. I never thought much about it as I didn't care much about any of that given my focus on the need it served - KYC-free trading.

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So why am I talking about KuCoin now? Well, just like Binance, they are strategically in the game of market manipulation, because what's easier to manipulate than lowcap trash IOUs?

Otherwise, how can they afford a $300 million settlement?

KuCoin has pleaded guilty to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business and agreed to pay nearly $300 million in a settlement with the US, with its founders also forced to resign from the crypto exchange.

PEKEN Global Limited, operating as KuCoin, entered its guilty plea in a Manhattan federal court as part of a settlement deal, the Department of Justice said on Jan. 27.

The plea includes a forfeiture of $184.5 million and a $112.9 million fine, and KuCoin will exit the US market for two years. The exchange’s founders, Michael Gan and Eric Tang, will also forfeit $2.7 million and “will no longer have any role in KuCoin’s management or operations” in a deferred prosecution agreement.

Just think about how most decentralized exchanges can't even brag about $50 million stable revenue set aside and ask yourself how Cexes manage to be pulling in billions in revenue.

The system is engineered to rob us!

Money In, More Money Out; Thanks For Playing

MartyParty has been calling out Binance, Coinbase and Wintermute for days now, that I've noticed, on manipulating the cryptocurrency market. I mostly stumbled on tweets he made concerning ETH and SOL manipulation.

The image above is one of his recent tweets highlighting how much the exchange, Binance, sent to the market maker, Wintermute and how much was sent back.

Based on the numbers, $15.16 billion out to Wintermute, $19.3 billion back to Binance over the last 30 days, the speculation here is that Binance has essentially profited $4.14 billion from market manipulation in the last 30 days.

We would load up and pay attention to Crypto Twitter as a source of sentiment, with specific accounts organized in specific categories.

One thing I used to like doing was purposely "nuking" a new 4H candle on BTC and/or ETH, which was an easy trap.

"Smart" traders know we'll eventually revisit those wickless candles, so it was good bait for me to set with eager buyers stepping in and the candle continuing lower.

They end up capitulating before we reverse.

This is a random tweet I stumbled on from a supposed ex-lead market maker at Jump exposing how they essentially rob traders.

The funny thing with every bit of this is that anyone who truly cares enough can look at the charts and the liquidity and understand exactly what is going on.

I've personally been caught up in about 3 short squeezes late 2024 and one last month and you can spot it right in the price and money movement.

None of it is organic, individual leverage traders that come out in profit most of the time are just lucky that MMs gameplan favors their predictions or that MMs really weren't heavily interested in their ticker.

Part of the ecosystem thinks Trump’s tariffs and trade war is responsible for the recent cryptocurrency markets crash, whilst others think it's the centralized exchanges.

I can't tell you confidently which it is as all can contribute but I can certainly tell you that centralized exchanges are wrecking millions of traders.

Deleverage now, buy spot and self-custody your wealth!

Posted Using INLEO