BTC opinion, thoughts? Please provide input and vote

MUST READ!

Are you in a state of panic and worried about the money you have invested in Bitcoin/Altcoins? You might have a reason.

The change of tide has got many of us wondering what is currently happening to the cryptocurrency market. Fear mongering and lack of confidence has led to the spread of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt, usually brought on intentionally to put a competitor at a disadvantage). But is this really why we have seen a dip? Absolutely not.

The truth is, that negative news does have an immediate impact on price and we were on a downward trend with prices plummeting for quite a while. We are definitely not in the clear just yet.

First of all, to those that are still new to this market: it is important to study the history of Bitcoin. You will realize that each january of a new year the cryptocurrency market faces a similar downward trend. The beginning of the new year often results in fresh investors, bringing in new capital, hence inflating market prices. This will be met with a fall, bringing the market back to a steady state. Some people have coined this as the "Bitcoin January Saga".

In my opinion the main explaination for the curent situation is the introduction of bitcoin futures, brought about last December. I won't explain what futures are as there are as I assume many of you already know and there many articles and videos regarding the subject. However the point I want to make is simple: Futures allow the whales from Wall Street (JP Morgan etc) to enter the crypto market without physically purchasing bitcoins - all futures are cash settle transactions! As of 17 january 2018 the first batch of futures expired (CBOE) and we came to learn that most of these contracts were SHORTs. What does it mean?
It simply means that that those big Wall Street whales decided to play against bitcoin. While opening futures contracts they bet that BTC will be very cheap and to simply put it: whatever they bet on WILL ALWAYS happen. This is because they have massive amounts of capital to ensure they can sway the market towards their predictions in a new market like cryptocurrency without the normal regulations from the Fed (for now)

Some of you might think that because futures are cash settled, it cannot affect the price? Sure. It cannot directly affect it but these big players no longer allow the free market to dictate the prices.
Since the introduction of futures, all they needed to do is purchase a proportion of BTC (resulting in a huge jump at the end of last year) and right before 17 january all they had to do was spread FUD (the major news about China, Korea etc) and use their own BTC (and other altcoins) to bring the price down as low as possible.

This resulted in loss of money due to them selling cheaper crypto but they would have made millions on futures.

If you still have any doubts about it? DON'T! Silence your fears and look at all graphs. In the 2 hours after the futures expired, prices of BTC and most altcoins shot up quickly.
All "walls" of cheap crypto all of sudden dissapeared, and the best part is since this market is totally ANONYMOUS then nothing can be proven and those big boys cannot be held accountable for their actions. We (small investors) will have absolutely no protection from market speculation. In the beginning we all were happy that crypto and trading is ANONYMOUS. However, now we have real reason to worry.

Next futures (CME) will expire on 26 january so until then I would expect a further drop followed by a swift increase (simply because those big boys will let us breathe again for a few weeks -> until the next futures expires (mid Feb i believe).

Due to this market currently being small, manipulation prices will happen on a large scale, ones we have never experienced before. It's more important than ever to follow up on all news about expiry dates of futures on CME and CBOE.