Bitcoin Manipulation? Who is Accumulating While Traders Are Getting Liquidated?

Two mornings that fit the script

On Dec. 8, Bitcoin erased about 16 hours of gains in roughly 20 minutes right after the U.S. session began, then clawed back slowly. On Dec. 17, the pattern looked even cleaner: BTC ran from about $87,500 to $90,365 into the open, then rolled over around 10:00 a.m. and slid to about $86,300 over the next 90 minutes. Liquidation trackers like CoinGlass showed a fast short squeeze early, then a long liquidation wave after the turn.

Traders have been flagging similar post-open flushes since early November. The repetition is why the theory keeps spreading.

This is why so many traders feel like Bitcoin is being held back from a bigger breakout. A repeated shakeout can keep price pinned in a range while patient money reloads.

Liquidity pockets, stops, and liquidations

Liquidity is just the stack of buy orders waiting below price. When that stack is thin, price can fall quickly until it finds real bids. Traders call that empty zone a liquidity pocket.

Now add leverage. A leveraged long is a position borrowed on margin. If price drops far enough, the exchange closes the trade automatically. That forced close is a liquidation, and it hits the market as real selling. Liquidations often cluster near obvious levels, which is why round numbers and prior lows keep acting like trapdoors.

You do not need a giant sell order to create chaos. You need a push into the zone where forced selling starts.

What the filings prove and what they do not

Start with the time gap. The most recent 13F snapshot is Q3 2025, which ends Sept. 30. The post-open flush people are focused on is happening right now in December. We will not see Q4 holdings until early 2026, so anyone calling this proven is selling certainty they do not have.

The factual part is the exposure. In its 13F filing for Q3 2025, filed Nov. 14, Jane Street Group reported 13,210,574 shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF, plus call options on 49,155,400 shares and put options on 25,834,700 shares, as shown in the SEC information table. The filing reports about $858.7 million in IBIT share value and about $5.73 billion of IBIT-linked reported value once options are included.

That is a real footprint. It still does not prove the viral claim that one desk is dumping BTC at 10 a.m. to accumulate. A 13F is a delayed quarterly snapshot. It does not show intraday trading, and large ETF positions can come from hedged market making or client facilitation.

This is also why the narrative is getting hotter. If the next filing shows IBIT exposure growing into year-end, it still will not identify who pushed a 10 a.m. wick, yet it would fit the accumulation story people keep repeating.

A clean, repeated flush can be a strategy even without a smoking gun. When the same time window keeps sweeping the same side of the book, you do not need to know the name of the desk to see the behavior.

Why the buyer stays hidden

When you buy IBIT, you buy shares from another trader. New shares get created when authorized participants deliver Bitcoin into the trust. That process can move coins between custodians, yet it still will not tell you which desk pushed the button.

That is one reason this story keeps mutating into a villain hunt. The tape can look engineered, while the proof trail is fragmented across futures, ETF shares, and options. It also ties into a bigger distribution shift we covered in Vanguard’s crypto ETF access change, since wider retail access can increase hedging flow and opening-hour churn even when long-term demand is building.

Protection beats prediction

If you trade, treat 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. ET as a high-risk window. Size down. Keep leverage modest. Use limit orders when you can, and avoid placing obvious stops where everyone else has them. If you invest, a scheduled buy outside the open can reduce the odds you react to a manufactured-looking wick.

Watch the same inputs the fast desks watch. Track liquidation heat on CoinGlass. Follow spot bitcoin ETF positioning for the bigger trend on the IBIT product page. When the post-open dump stops working, that is usually the signal that the supply at those levels is gone.

There is also a policy angle. A market that can be whipped around by leverage and opaque routing needs clearer rules. That is why a crypto market structure bill matters for investor protection, and why we keep pointing readers to our breakdown of Trump’s market structure push.

If this really is an accumulation phase, the tell will be simple: the 10 a.m. hit stops producing follow-through. Until then, do not be the exit liquidity that funds the next leg.