Okay we are almost to my Jan 2nd mark, and I thought I should share the information from an article. I think he made a good analysis, and everyone should consider reading it. I'm going to share my opinion, and what I think could happen soon.

http://jamescrypto.com/the-christmas-crypto-correction-what-really-happened/

First there is the Tether printing, and pumping of Bitcoin. I have been watching this happen for some time now, and I expect there is something coming in this regards.

First there was the major correction, and some of the back story from the article I think is helpful.

"At this point, Bitfinex started printing Tethers at a rate they had never printed them before. Over $150 million in one week. Normally this would lead to a huge jump in Bitcoin prices as it had done in the past. But this time was different, the price barely moved $1K, which in Bitcoin terms is just normal daily movement. So the week leading up to the correction, Bitfinex printed another $200 million in Tethers. This should have surely pushed the price above $20K which was their goal all along. But there was huge resistance at $20K and nothing would push the price past it. The manipulators realized Bitcoin was not going to pass $20K in the near future, so they started to coming up with a plan for the big whales to cash out some profits they had accumulated since they had been artificially pumping the BTC price since it was $6K."

Source

We must also look internally within our own crypto ranks.

To make matters worse we have collusion, and I suspect a few exchanges are also involved. I think that by shedding light onto this event we might get some de-centralized exchanges up and running.

"Charlie Lee is an insider and has always traded and made moves based on his inside connections. Charlie knew the whales were planning to cash out their profits from this year soon, so he decided to do the same, but under the guise of some phony altruistic reason. When a whale like Charile sells, you should too. On the way to the moon, all the honest guys get left here on Earth. But Charlie also knew something else was coming…..Bitcoin Cash."

I personally don't trust this person, and think he is just an opportunist looking to cash in on the markets. He does not care about any consequences, and does not seem to care about the underlying nature behind cryptocurrency.

Now we come to the bitcoin cash debacle on Coinbase, and how the pricing was crazy, and I even saw the price above 8K myself, and thought something fishy was happening.

Source and More Info on Price Spoofing

"The Bitcoin cash robot that ruined Christmas. Then came Coinbase, which announced early that they would be selling and trading Bitcoin Cash. With the whales behind Bitcoin stalled out, the boys behind Bitcoin Cash decided to have a little pump of their own. They had their trading bot all set up to pump the price to the moon, but the best laid plans of mice and bots often goes awry, as it did on the launch of Bitcoin Cash. Within one minute of launch, orders were pouring in for Bitcoin Cash for $9K. Obviously, no human would be flooding the books with orders 3X above the current market value only a minute after release. This was clearly a bot meant to boost the price, however it went out of control since it was not programmed to handle an empty order book and exposed itself. This is why Coinbase shut down BCH trading for the day. They knew a bot on their exchange had been exposed and they needed to shut everything down and remove the evidence, which they did."

I don't really know what really happen here in this regard but think that this may be as good as a explanation I have seen so far. What this tells me is that these whales are not going to stop but are only waiting for the next opportunity to strike.

"The big cash out. With the Bitcoin whales unable to boost Bitcoin past $20K and the out of control bot that failed to pump Bitcoin cash, it was now the peak, things would go no higher as the whales had run out of tricks. So the plan was to start selling. And yes, it was the whales selling. No retail investors can even get $1K out of their little accounts without running into huge issues with verification and other issues. So no, this was the giant whales slowly selling off their positions and taking the profits they had built up over the year."

The correction was great and deep even into Alt-coins, and no matter what some of us think is happening we have to conclude that there might be a group of whales looking to leave us holding the bag.

"The price needed to hit a real support level that made sense on the charts. So as the price was falling, orders for as many as 1K bitcoins started showing up on Bitfinex. At that time, that was a $12 million order."

So what does this mean for us now?

I for one am positioned for a very large pump, and I will be taking more off the table next time prices hit all time highs. I'm planning on buying more ICO's and tokens with these up-coming profits. Creating a partition between myself, and these Bitcoin whales. By concentrating on what I consider up and coming technology, concepts, and ideas.

ERC20 tokens will be an area of concentration with tokens like ETHLend and Sether. Buy geting into these very early we can stay ahead of the whales, and take profits for other crypto real-estate. This does not mean we are 100% protected but you could take things a step closer and add some market shorts as insurance if you felt you needed too.

My friend Randy @hilarski just made a great post, and I think you should check it out. He makes some 2018 predictions. Knowledge is power. https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@hilarski/my-2018-bitcoin-and-cryptocurrency-market-cap-predictions

My Random Thought Generator Has Shut Down.

Until Next Time!

@johngentry