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By David Weidner

An always-on crypto hype machine lives to goose prices and then blame ‘macro’ when the selloff hits

As bitcoin cracked, liquidations mounted and short-term holders capitulated.

It’s the oldest game on Wall Street – the pump and dump. Only the tools have changed.

They came in by the tens of thousands: young, internet-native, mostly male, lured by the promise of lightning gains and financial freedom. For many, crypto wasn’t just an asset class – it was a storyline; a chance to get rich quickly and grab outsized returns before the mainstream figured out what was happening. That story was sold to them constantly through late-night livestreams, hyped Twitter threads, “moon or bust” Discord raids.

Now, after the crash, the crypto bros are showing signs of burnout – drained from margin calls, bag-holding and fading hope that the next “rocket tweet” will ever get them back to the high they were chasing.

The November wreck in bitcoin (BTCUSD) – from north of $120,000 to the low $80,000s – didn’t come out of nowhere. It was manufactured in plain sight by an always-on hype machine that lives to goose prices and then blame “macro” when gravity returns. Sure, crypto, including bitcoin, has rallied since falling below $85,000, but its “November to remember” crash wiped out dumb money. The subsequent rally only shows there’s dumber money out there.

We watched the script unfold in real time: chest-thumping year-end calls, retail pile-ins and leverage, a sharp downdraft, and then the postmortems telling the faithful to HODL [hold on for dear life] because the next big rally is imminent. Meanwhile, investors who bought the story are walking away. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs bled roughly $3.5-$4 billion in November – their worst month since launch – as bitcoin erased its 2025 gains and slid into December still falling.

With crypto, you rarely need a smoking gun; leverage and narrative do the job.

This is how a walled-garden market works. Crypto’s most influential voices sell a future where bitcoin hedges U.S. dollar DXY debasement and soon sits beside gold (GC00) on central-bank balance sheets. Then they flood social media with price targets timed for maximum virality.

Arthur Hayes, the BitMEX co-founder, held the line on a $200,000 to $250,000 year-end bitcoin target even after November’s plunge – echoed by reposts and crypto media. Michael Saylor’s camp predicted $150,000 “by end of this year,” while VanEck reiterated an $180,000 “year-end” bitcoin target as late as August. This cheerleading sets sentiment, drives flows and helps build the runway for the next “sell the news.”

Then comes the unwind. With crypto, you rarely need a smoking gun – leverage and narrative do the job. As bitcoin cracked, liquidations mounted and short-term holders capitulated, while ETFs registered heavy outflows. The result was a trillion-dollar drawdown across digital assets and a price air-pocket down to the $80,000s. Even sympathetic analysts called it a classic “reset.” That’s a polite word for a market built on promotion, margin and the hope that the next post goes viral.

“Finfluencers” and coordinated campaigns can spark short-lived pops that fade once the insiders are out.

If this sounds like the oldest game on Wall Street – the pump and dump – that’s because it is. Only the tools have changed. “Finfluencers” and coordinated campaigns can spark short-lived pops that fade once the insiders are out. Crypto markets have billions in wash trading – fake volume that flatters momentum and dupes newcomers. Influencer calls deliver initial bumps that quickly evaporate.

Unsuspecting investors are told bitcoin isn’t just a trade – it’s insurance against the dollar – and, any day now, central banks will buy it. The facts say otherwise. The BIS, IMF and major central bankers keep drawing the same bright line: crypto is speculative, volatile and unsuitable as reserves; banks’ crypto exposure is tightly capped under global rules. Switzerland’s central bank publicly rebuffed bitcoin for reserves this year. Yes, you’ll find a headline-grabbing outlier – the Czech governor floated a small reserve allocation – but that remains a lonely view.

Read: For these big players, bitcoin investing is all about power

Crypto fatigue is setting in

If your due diligence begins and ends on social-media and chats, you’re playing a game where the other side writes the rules and the storyline.

Meanwhile, retail is exhausted. November brought multibillion-dollar redemptions, three straight weeks of ETF outflows and headlines about “crypto winter” all over again. Trading desks talk about “seller fatigue,” but that’s after the selling.

There’s a less glamorous explanation for bitcoin’s November plunge: It was due to content – a deliberate online campaign cycle. Early in the fall, the most widely followed social-media accounts planted calls for a bitcoin moonshot by December.

The memes did their work. Leverage piled in, and, when macro jitters and ETF outflows hit, the same voices reframed it as “healthy” before re-upping the end-of-year targets. Hayes’s bitcoin $250,000 post ricocheted across X; Saylor-adjacent channels packaged “this-year” price decks. In an unregulated attention economy, those posts are order flow. And when the tide turns, the exit is narrow.

The market structure amplifies it. Crypto still trades on venues where leverage is cheap, surveillance is lighter than with equities and market-making and marketing are indistinguishable. Crypto isn’t price risk; it’s narrative risk.

The crypto-hedge story – inflation, deficits, dollar debasement – sounds reasonable until investors find the correlations aren’t stable enough in the moments we need them most. November’s drop arrived alongside broader risk-off and funding stress – exactly when a “hedge” should help. Instead, bitcoin traded like a high-beta risk asset. Even crypto-friendly explainers acknowledged the slide reflected investors “ditching risk” and short-term capitulation.

Investors aren’t dumb. They’re human. Many of them are young and inexperienced. They listen to confident voices. But if your due diligence begins and ends on social media and chats, you’re playing a game where the other side writes the rules and the storyline. November was the reminder that, when an “asset” depends on engagement to work, the product is you.

Ultimately, investors should treat crypto’s influencer economy like any other funnel. When the call is for a year-end moonshot, ask who benefits if you buy that exposure today – and who’s already positioned to sell it back to you tomorrow. Recognize that the adoption stories (dollar hedge, central banks) remain mostly marketing copy, not monetary policy. If you still want exposure, size it like a lottery ticket, not a Treasury bill.

And when the next “healthy reset” arrives? Remember November.

David Weidner writes about markets, money and the stories behind them. His work has appeared in MarketWatch, The Wall Street Journal, McKinsey Quarterly, The Deal and American Banker.

Plus: This ‘safe’ cryptocurrency promises stability – but its claim is shaky

More: If you’re this type of investor, get out of the stock market now

-David Weidner

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