Crypto’s Hidden Scapegoat: Who’s the Real Culprit?

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Oh, the crypto market, where even the algorithms are whispering secrets about a “forced seller”-because nothing says “I’m a big deal” like a systematic sell-off that’s as predictable as a toddler’s tantrum. 🕵️♂️

Tushar Jain, ever the drama queen, posted on X that “it feels like a big forced seller is in the market,” as if the market were a haunted house and he was the first to scream. “We’re seeing systematic selling during specific hours,” he added, because nothing says “I’m a financial genius” like citing “specific hours.” 🧠

Jain, ever the historian, is framing this as a repeat of 2022, where the market was basically a broken record of “Oh no, not again!” He warned that “it takes some time for all the bankruptcies to reveal themselves,” which is just a fancy way of saying, “Let’s all wait nervously while the chaos unfolds.” 🕳️

The delayed discovery of losses is central to the emerging “forced seller” narrative. It’s like a game of hide-and-seek, but instead of a child, it’s a massive trading firm hiding its financial sins. 🎭

Systematic Sell Pressure Points To Forced Crypto Seller

Other market participants are publicly describing a similar pattern. LondonCryptoClub wrote that it “increasingly feels like someone out there being forced to liquidate a portfolio,” highlighting the “constant mechanical nature of the selling (in US hours).” This is basically the crypto equivalent of a vending machine that only sells expired snacks. 🍫

ETF analyst James Seyffart, ever the detective, asked if anyone had “any theories or guesses on who it could be,” because nothing says “I’m a curious person” like asking who’s secretly ruining the market. 🕵️♀️

Rumors about structural damage surfaced almost immediately, with someone claiming two large trading firms were liquidated to zero, because nothing says “I’m a conspiracy theorist” like saying a company’s net worth is now zero. 🧨

No firm fitting that description has publicly confirmed such a loss, but the structure Klages outlines matches what many professionals see as a key fragility: cross-collateralized altcoin books used as funding and margin. It’s like building a house of cards on a trampoline. 🏗️

Fundstrat’s and Bitmine’s Tom Lee independently argued on November 15 that the price action “has all the signs of a market maker (or two) with a major ‘hole’ in their balance sheet,” describing “sharks circling to trigger a liquidation / dumping of prices BTC.” He characterized the resulting pain as short-term and explicitly stated that it “does not” change his view on “the ETH supercycle of Wall Street building on blockchain.” Because nothing says “I’m optimistic” like ignoring the obvious. 🦊

To me, the weakness in crypto has the all the signs

– of a market maker (or two) with a major “hole” in their balance sheet

Sharks circling to trigger a liquidation / dumping of prices $BTC

Is this pain short-term? Yes

Does this change the $ETH supercycle of Wall Street…

– Thomas (Tom) Lee (not drummer) FSInsight.com (@fundstrat) November 15, 2025

For now, there is no “dead body” on the surface: no major market maker or trading shop has publicly disclosed insolvency linked to October 10, and the identity of any alleged forced seller remains unknown. It’s like a mystery novel where the killer is still in the shadows, and the reader is just here for the snacks. 🍿

But the consistency of the reports-systematic US-hours sell programs, rumors of cross-collateralized books blown out, and references to hidden balance-sheet holes-suggests that, weeks after the 10/10 shock, crypto markets may still be trading under the weight of positions that are being unwound because they have to be, not because anyone wants them to be. Because nothing says “I’m a resilient market” like being forced to sell. 💸

At press time, the total crypto market cap stood at $3.1 trillion. Or as I like to call it, “The Price of a Very Expensive Conspiracy.” 💰

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2025-11-21 03:16