In the crypto market, spot trading is about patience, while contracts are about fate. But for true traders, the manipulators, they play with mathematics, psychology, and meticulously planned slaughter. Every market surge or plunge may be a meticulously staged directional explosion, with innocent retail investors often being the precise target.
So, how do manipulators gradually lead you to liquidation?
Step one: Manipulate the candlesticks, weave a dream.
Manipulators first need to create a market trend that you are willing to believe in. They will use large amounts of capital to pump or dump, creating enticing technical patterns that mislead retail investors into thinking they see a 'trend'.
Fake breakout: A rapid rise breaks through key resistance, attracting FOMO funds. Retail investors get excited seeing the breakout, going all in, even leveraging. As a result, the manipulators smash the market back down, burying late entrants’ long positions.
Fake crash: Create a deep pullback to intimidate the market, forcing panic selling while collecting cheap chips. Just when retail investors think the market is done for, they suddenly push it up, leaving the trapped investors to take positions at even higher points.
Candlesticks are their canvas, and retail investors' emotions are the paint; manipulators use candles to create the illusion of 'soon to be rich', leading you to willingly jump in.
Step two: Induce funding rates, giving you a 'winning logic'.
If you're a seasoned contract trader, you’re definitely watching the funding rates.
Is the direction with high funding rates likely to be liquidated? Yes, but it may not be the wrong direction.
Negative funding rates mean 'guaranteed profits'? When everyone thinks this way, it often becomes a cash cow for manipulators.
Manipulators will control rates at specific moments, giving retail investors the illusion that 'the market is leaning in a certain direction', like making one side’s funding rate particularly high, inducing more people to hedge, and then in the next second, a direct reversal leading to a blowup.
Step three: Fake breakout + fake support, precisely harvesting the leveraged traders.
The real killer move is here—manipulators don’t play direction; they play your stop-loss and leverage.
They know your stop-loss position because most retail investors set stop-losses based on common technical indicators.
They know your averaging-up habits, such as you like to buy on pullbacks to moving averages, buy on breakouts, double bottoms, etc.
They also know your liquidation price, which is the most disgusting part.
Thus, the most common blowup technique is:
First, fake a breakout at a key resistance level to lure in the bulls.
Then deliberately push back down to trigger stop-losses and force a short squeeze.
When the market thinks a trend has reversed and bears start to go crazy with positions, manipulators then pull back hard, directly countering the bears.
This is the 'backstab game' of the contract market—whether you're long or short, there’s always a knife aimed directly at you.
Step four: Accurately calculate the leverage liquidation point, taking it all away in one wave.
The scariest thing about the contract market is: leverage is a knife that magnifies your greed and fear.
The higher the leverage, the closer your liquidation point.
When market prices approach your liquidation point, the exchange will automatically close your position, selling your margin to the market.
Manipulators can use large funds to precisely hit your liquidation point, creating a chain reaction of blowups.
For instance, if a key price point in the market accumulates a large number of high-leverage long positions, manipulators only need to push down slightly to trigger the first wave of liquidations, and the subsequent cascading liquidations will complete automatically; they don't need to expend much effort, and the market will kill itself.
What you think is a technical pullback? It’s actually manipulators using the stop-losses and liquidation points of leveraged traders to 'ignite explosives' in the market, smoothly harvesting.
Step five: Public opinion + social media, manipulating market sentiment.
Many people think the market is purely a battle of funds, but don’t forget, information is the most valuable asset.
KOL calls: Some influencers suddenly become collectively bullish or bearish? Most likely, it’s a script they have set up in advance.
News impact: Sometimes, a bearish market event strikes right at a critical point, the precision is like a missile hitting a mosquito... Is it really just a coincidence?
Fake news manipulation: Some gossip, on-chain data analysis, and the so-called 'whale movements' are all tools to manipulate retail investor emotions.
'Let the market set the pace for you' is the highest level of harvesting technique for the manipulators.
So, how can retail investors save themselves?
You might wonder: Is the contract market completely off-limits?
Actually, if you know the rules, you can avoid being scammed. Here are a few tips to prevent being blown up:
✅ Use high leverage sparingly: The higher the leverage, the faster you die. Within 5x is still human; above 10x is basically market fuel.
✅ Enter in batches, don’t go all in: Don’t go all in seeing a breakout; manipulators love emotional traders.
✅ Don’t blindly trust technical patterns: Technical analysis is useful, but it’s only useful for retail investors; for manipulators, it’s a GPS for the greens.
✅ Don’t blindly trust influencers: KOLs' words can even be interpreted in reverse; no one in the market will selflessly hand you money.
✅ Focus on market sentiment, not your imagination: When everyone is bullish, it’s often a high point; when everyone is desperate, it could be a turning point.
Remember, the contract market is not gambling; it’s the battleground of manipulators. If you don’t know who the hunter is, then you are the prey.
The summary is, this market is really messed up; if you can survive, you've already surpassed many. Avoid it if you can, just play spot trading, at least you can preserve your capital. 💀💰
