The evidence is all circumstantial and it is simply not enough. It reminds me of Newsweek's claim that Dorian Nakamoto is Satoshi.

When someone claims there is manipulation, they also need to show who is doing the manipulation, how they are doing the manipulation, and especially why they are doing the manipulation. They also need to show the results of the manipulation -- did the manipulator achieve their goal or not?.

Otherwise, it is all just unsupported conspiracy theory.

illegal manipulation is creating ghost accounts filled with balances that had no real deposit/withdrawals.

the report says that bitcoin and tther(dollars) flowing in and out. so its saying that no "spoofing" occured
any 'manipulation. is not illegal just out of the ordinary. and yea because tther was used to skip the 3-5 day usual fiat delays exchanges were able to arbitrage in seconds instead of days. again this is not illegal, just something that is new to the fiat market becuse they are not used to being able to move fiat value in seconds.

the hype bubble of october 2017-december is definetly out of the ordinary speculation/hype/ not based on true value. but not based on illegal 'spoofing'

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after re-reading the article a second time i came to the conclusion th NYTimes theen trid to take credit for a change in the price of 5% due to the releas it made.
funnly enough though is that bitcoin is known to have 5% variace often so that just made me laugh that NYTimes wants to grab some glory. it shows how desparate they are to try making themselves look like they are well involved in something, which they are not

It's easy for the media to stimulate the minds of the people and letting them believe that they already have found the solution in stopping bitcoin's long-reigning volatility in its markets, by publishing a single report without any substantial evidence that market manipulation is indeed that cause of all the market's volatility. I think that manipulation plays a part in volatility but it's not the only cause of it: there are other more plausible reasons that dictate volatility, and one simple fact is that bitcoin is a globally-open market without any restrictions as long as you comply with the prerequisites on an exchange, and then you can start trading freely. As for the previous rise to ATH, it can heavily be attributed to FOMO and public hype once one of the deemed 'psychological barriers' were broken, with also manipulation at the sidelines of course.

Have never read the report before but I some how agree to what was said in the article because the bitcoin market was not looking good after the some particular whales flooded the market with thousands of bitcoin. Besides, they even mentioned the price range that the price will dump to but I don't know if bitfinex were the one behind it though.

Bitcoins is manipulated by whales in the market. They are doing this to enable the price to drop so that they can buy it cheap.

I don’t think that there is manipulation possible in the valuation of bitcoin. Though the inflation or deflation in the valuation is influencing that the increase or decrease in valuation depends on the demand and supply of bitcoin and moreover the number of investors specifically the whales who use to invest bulk in the bitcoin. And I don’t think that this article is relevant even this is all shit written in this article this kind of manipulation is not possible in the valuation I guess.

This is not capable of causing any FUD because it is not seen as a new information. I guess most people here have heard of manipulation and me I don't get surprised when it is coming up on discussion.

good point when you also take a look at the time when the article was published. by that time we were guessing this but now we are sure. it is obvious that the media and all those behind this "talk of manipulation" wanted to manipulate the price themselves. that was mostly an attempt to increase the drama at that time because of the drop.