Bitcoin's record over the past 24 hours looked like one designed for crypto investors, with Bitcoin topping the $90,000 mark in the early morning hours of Dec. 29, only to regain that gain in less than 12 hours.
Traders like TedPillows posted clown emojis next to charts showing repeating peaks and troughs, while CryptoSeth called this a “fraudulent products” practice, noting that the same sawtooth pattern repeats 30 times.
Furthermore, Wimar However, as shown in his screenshot, the on-chain transfers involving Wintermute totaled less than $30 million.
Still, the question is not whether the accusations are unfounded, but whether the data can distinguish between opportunistic stop-hunting and a structurally weak, overleveraged market that crumbles in the same way every time someone leans in.
Microstructure tells the story
Binance's cumulative volume delta (buy volume minus sell volume over time) shows a clear pattern. That is, aggressive buying causes a sharp intraday spike, causing the CVD to spike as market orders raise the offer, then aggressive selling causes an equally sharp reversal, causing the CVD to collapse as the trader reaches the bid.
Prices close where they started and net CVD remains roughly flat across the window.
That's exactly what the “book progresses, harvest stops, momentum slows, then fades back” sequence looks like. This is not a slow trend-forming conviction, but rather a rapid up-and-down movement that hardly changes the market, but it is profitable for those who trade on both legs.
The tape does not indicate who initiated the move or whether it was coordinated, but it does indicate that the move itself was driven by active directional flow rather than passive order matching. These are indicators of market manipulation.
This is not a one-time print. The same V-shaped spike and retrace played out on Bitstamp and Bybit through December. Different venues, similar patterns repeat over time.
This suggests that the environment itself is conducive to the very kind of behavior that traders are condemning: a structurally weak and overleveraged market that keeps leaning into obvious stop zones in order to continue functioning.
It does not prove that it is the same trader every time. The market can easily be pushed forward for those with enough size and speed to move prices and rebalance inventory and collateral across the venue before the fluctuations reverse.
someone is stop hunting
This tape is very similar to a classic stop hunt, as liquidity is thin during the holiday period. According to data from CoinGecko, while other major exchanges have not even reached $1 billion in trading volume recently, Binance has consistently remained below $10 billion in trading volume.
Additionally, Coinglass data shows that open interest has changed by 0.08%, -0.67%, and 0.03% over the past 1, 4, and 24 hours, respectively.
The total liquidation amount on these horizons was divided into longs and shorts, amounting to tens of millions of dollars, and was not a unilateral large-scale liquidation associated with an explosion of crowded trades.
Prices on other venues have broadly followed Binance rather than disconnecting, indicating that this movement is not isolated to one order book. And on-chain snapshots show custody reshuffling, rather than transaction aspects or the P&L path of a particular wallet.
The specialized desk was active, as on-chain data shows over 87 BTC leaked from Binance to the Wintermute deposit wallet, but what they were doing and why remains unclear.
Taken together, this evidence fits into a pattern of opportunistic profit-seeking in thin orders. Aggressive buying causes Bitcoin to skyrocket during the day, aggressive selling causes Bitcoin to bounce back, and cumulative flows eventually level out.
The repeated inverted V-shaped movements in Bitstamp, Bybit, and Binance, as well as the high volume of cross-venue flows from Binance to market makers and exchange addresses, all point to a market that is easy for well-capitalized traders to squeeze out in search of short-term profits.
Evidence suggests opportunistic manipulation of the tapes. While the behavior described by traders is plausible and supported by patterns, the data does not identify any particular orchestrator or indicate intent beyond a reasonable doubt.
What the data shows is that this environment is structurally vulnerable to exactly the kind of things that stop-hunting traders are accusing of, and the tape looks like someone took advantage of it.
