Whales have always played the same way: with influencer tactics, FOMO, and altcoin seasons, they attracted unsuspecting individuals eager to make easy fortunes, allowing the bubble to inflate and then bursting it, leaving a quake for everyone else. The market collapsed, and it took years to find new hordes of fish keen to bet on the crypto wave.

A classic Ponzi scheme where the last ones are emptied en masse. It worked a couple of times, and they feel it's easy to repeat the cycle again. But is it?

Something changed: the whales have been individuals or private companies taking advantage of the scheme, dodging regulations and taxes, even financing with the profits murky businesses in drugs, terrorism, and non-aligned governments. Uncle Sam was being left out of the party!

This year they are here with their large investment funds through ETFs, and the whales know it: they can no longer waste money inflating the market if there is a BlackRock that can counterbalance the trend. The cold war of crypto has arrived.

ETFs versus traditional whales: the funds come to disrupt the market and regulate it, for that they have to sweep away the whales, if they come for that: traditional manipulation is added to this opposing interest, and that's why there is a chess game in progress.

The whales want to manipulate upwards to sweep away the small ones, the ETFs want to counterattack at that moment to sweep the whales when they are eating and distracted. That's why this time is different.