We have all witnessed an impressive Bitcoin surge: for the first time over the summer, it broke above the $80,000 mark, then set a new high since early May, surpassing $81,300. In just a few days, the leading cryptocurrency gained about 25%, and the main question hangs in the air: what happens next? Experts, as always, are divided. Some are shouting about a quick run to $90,000 within two weeks, while others are predicting an inevitable pullback, arguing that such a strong impulse will inevitably lead to a downward correction. And each of them speaks with absolute confidence, backing up their claims with charts, macroeconomics, and historical analogies. But I, like many who follow this market closely, can’t help smiling when reading these categorical forecasts. Let’s be honest and look at how price is actually formed—and stop believing in the magic of lines on a chart.

The key thing to understand: we don’t actually trade bitcoin. On centralized exchanges—where 99% of all speculation happens—you don’t see real coins, only entries in a database. These are numbers tied to the US dollar or stablecoins, which, in essence, can be “printed” in unlimited quantities. And here’s the crucial point: in the BTC/USDT pair, which is the most popular and liquid on the market, market makers can issue an unlimited amount of stablecoins, thereby creating endless liquidity for purchases. They simply print USDT in their database, buy “paper” bitcoin with it, push up the price, and the entire market—picking up that signal via API—shows the exact same chart. So in practice, you’re not seeing a reflection of real supply and demand, but the outcome of how many virtual stablecoins a market maker decided to print and spend on manipulation. That’s why all exchanges show the same price: their algorithms are synchronized with each other, and everyone trades numbers in pairs with numbers that were printed the same way. And who controls this process? Market makers. These are big players who don’t just provide liquidity, but can also create trends, generate movement, and simulate buying or selling pressure. This isn’t conspiracy theory—it’s structural, high-tech manipulation. Companies like Wintermute use algorithms, artificial intelligence, and micro-bots to detect liquidity and move the market. Often, the price rises not because “people are buying,” but because someone needs the price to go up. We’re scared with stories about how “the whole market” supposedly reacted to news about a drop in US inflation or the statements of the Fed chair. But that’s an oversimplification. Most often, a sudden surge is a planned price shift, and afterwards a convenient macroeconomic justification is retrofitted to it. The market doesn’t always tell you the truth—it tells you what benefits those who run it.

If market makers can “print” stablecoins in unlimited quantities and use them to buy “paper” bitcoins in a database, does that mean the price can fall to zero? Theoretically, yes—but there’s one important nuance: real bitcoin. Retail investors and institutional players have finally started understanding the difference between a number on an exchange screen and an actual coin in a cold wallet. We’re seeing a massive withdrawal of bitcoins from exchanges. This process, called “exchange exodus,” has reached record levels—exchange balances have fallen to minimums unseen since 2017. Over the year, about 440,000 BTC was withdrawn, and the reserves on exchanges are only about 5.74% of the total supply. Who is buying bitcoin? Institutional “whales.” BlackRock and Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) are gobbling up coins, creating an enormous liquidity deficit for selling. When a market maker sells you a “paper” bitcoin paired with USDT, and you withdraw it to your wallet, you create a problem for the market maker: they may not have the real coin available to cover their obligations. Selling real bitcoin at $50,000–$60,000 when there isn’t much of it physically in storage—and demand is growing—makes no sense.

This is that very fundamental factor that can push the price upward. A shortage of a real asset amid growing demand from those who want to move it to cold wallets is the most powerful catalyst.

Someone will say: “Well, an exchange can’t just print bitcoins—that’s impossible!” — It can. And we have not one, but two undeniable pieces of evidence at once. Recall the story of the infamous exchange Mt.Gox. In 2013, it processed 70% of all bitcoin transactions in the world. But few people knew that the exchange was technically insolvent. In 2011, hackers stole about 650,000 BTC from its wallets, and CEO Mark Karpelès covered it up. To hide the missing funds and create the appearance of trading, he launched two trading bots inside his own exchange: Markus and Willy. These bots used non-existent dollars to buy bitcoins from real sellers. In half a year, they “printed” about 600,000 BTC worth of fake demand. The price of bitcoin skyrocketed from $150 to $1,242, and when the bubble burst and the loss was revealed, the market collapsed. That entire famous bull rally of 2013 was fabricated. The conclusions of researchers from the University of Tulsa and Tel Aviv University are unequivocal: the bots’ suspicious trading activity caused an unprecedented spike. The price we all see on charts may simply be the result of number games in a database.

But if you think this was a long time ago and such a thing is impossible now, here’s a fresh example from 2026. Bithumb, one of South Korea’s largest exchanges, caused real chaos. As part of a promotional campaign called “Random Box,” an employee was supposed to hand out small cash rewards of 2,000 won (about $1.40) to users. But by mistake, instead of “won,” the system entered “2,000 bitcoins” for each recipient. In the end, 695 users received 2,000 BTC in their database accounts—about 620,000 “paper” bitcoins total. That was 15 times higher than the real bitcoin reserves the exchange itself actually had! And what did some lucky winners do? They instantly started selling those virtual coins, and the price of bitcoin on Bithumb crashed by 17% to 81.1 million won, while on other platforms everything stayed stable. The exchange realized the problem only after 20–35 minutes: it froze the accounts and returned 99.7% of those “phantom” coins, but about $12.3 billion was still lost or withdrawn. This incident clearly showed that exchanges can create bitcoins out of thin air in their internal databases without any real backing. It even prompted an emergency check by South Korean regulators, who said the incident “exposed vulnerabilities and risks of virtual assets.”

Technical analysis is an attempt to find patterns in the chaos created by market makers. It can work on short timeframes, but it’s useless for global forecasts. When we look at monthly charts and try to predict where bitcoin will be in a year, we forget that at any moment some rocket could come in—or an unexpected piece of news could break out—which big players use as a pretext to maneuver. A market maker can frame any news as bad for the market and crash the price, and then, a day later, frame it as good and lift the price. Can they do that? Of course. That’s why I say technical analysis only has a place for intraday trading, where levels and volumes matter; on a global horizon, it’s more like guessing at random. Fundamentally, we have two opposing forces: the manipulative power of market makers, which can push the price anywhere in the short term, and the real scarcity of bitcoin created by long-term holders withdrawing coins from exchanges. Which will outweigh the other? Most likely, scarcity. We’re moving toward seeing a price of $100,000 and above, simply because there will be less bitcoin available for sale, while the number of people wanting to buy a “real” asset keeps growing.

Now, after the break above $80,000, people have started looking at charts again and reading bitcoin news, because no other asset has shown such growth in such a short time. And that attracts new buyers.

Those who haven’t bought yet, looking at this momentum, start getting into the market—often out of greed, fearing they’ll miss the opportunity. They buy at $80,000, then at $90,000, and the price keeps going up, fueled by fear of missing out. But here’s what matters: many of these new buyers won’t leave their coins on the exchange—they’ll withdraw them to cold wallets, and that creates another shortage. And when the average purchase price rises, there’s no point for the market maker to sell at $50,000–$60,000 anymore, because the market maker truly doesn’t have much physical bitcoin in reserve, while demand is being stoked by those who want to take the coin for themselves. We’re headed for a major redistribution, and—like history shows—those who hold bitcoin for more than five years end up in profit, outpacing inflation and earning decent returns. Blockchain technologies are being rolled out worldwide; SWIFT carried out its first blockchain-based transactions; all new finance is moving toward blockchain and smart contracts, and bitcoin, of course, won’t remain on the sidelines of this process. I believe in the price of bitcoin at $1,000,000, but this is not financial advice. It’s simply faith that digital scarcity and global adoption will do their work. For now—don’t trust loud headlines and technical figures. Remember that the market is run by those who have more liquidity and the ability to create it, and look at fundamentals: who is buying, who is selling, and how many real coins are actually in circulation. Think for yourself and make your own decisions.

Author: Yan Krivonosov