Who is the real boss?
Many of early traders have been robbed in the last 7 years of crypto, not because of bad trades, but because of "hacks", "ddos", flash crashes and closing doors of exchanges. Many of them would be considered big whales today if not having been robbed of almost everything.
Those who survived created their own exchanges, platforms and groups. There are some really nice guys still in here and not so many nice people with dark intentions.
The transfer of wealth is slowly being transferred from traders and investors to exchanges through such circumstances and fees. They've become monster in this field. They are the real bosses here, not whales in the major markets. That's why you should be careful using margin and in altcoin space.
There are way too many naive and gullible traders and investors in crypto, with no prior experience in trading, finance and business. They didn't even saw the bubble forming and thinks everything can only go up and up. They have been punished, yet try to rationalize they're still in profit. They won't be anymore after carrying bags when they see their portfolio drastically decreased. Maybe that wakes them up.
For you to make a profit, somebody else has to buy higher from you and you need to go above all costs (fees, etc.). This last bull run to 11.8k was all too shady for me, since the volume wasn't there and I noticed the 0.1 buy orders and even tinier all day, every day coming from bots. Level 2 market profile showed this in detail to confirm my suspicion. There was no real demand, so big dumps were to be expected and as said earlier, they can go far lower than the price of accumulation, especially when you can go short.
Since exchanges have become behemoths, they have large stacks of btc in their possession. This game is then run by the most wealthy. You'd be naive to think they don't have a hand in this. Just question what goes on around you, does a 100k dump accross major exchanges in 15 minutes sounds legit to you? Or was it all orchestrated and all it took was to push news messages across news website at the same time to make it look like legitimate?
Even the sec has stated that the funds on all those unregulated exchanges are not in your possession, since you do not own the private keys. They can even change your orders or not execute them at all, without consequences.
Those are some huge risks you're playing with here unlike the forex market which cannot be manipulated other than government and central banks, this game is much worse. It's much worse than most shady forex brokers.
How do you know that hacks, ddos, website offline, etc. are not done on purpose to fill their own bags? How do you know if they didn't sell around the top and dumped on you? Since there are no audits and regulations, they can do whatever they want. And that game is about to end.
The coming crash:
As predicted, once again, exchanges will pull the floor from under you when the governments and international institutions are going after them. Some have already been fined for manipulation, but it will get worse. Audits are required, which means open book, which means we're going to see who does the pump and dumps, washtrading, spoofing, etc. They also go after coins from ico's on those exchanges and potential criminals and terrorists.
You think this is a good thing, and it is in the end, but what do you think about market price, isn't that what you care for ultimately? They have tons of bags to unload, but that's not the only risk, there is a far bigger risk. People are sueing the 2 major fiat exchanges which is still in the making. So you can get in, but you cannot get out, creating hotel california scenario. Then there are more court hearings soon from tether, but those are minor compared to what's going on.