When CME Group launched the first Bitcoin futures contract in 2017, the firm’s Chairman Emeritus, Leo Melamed, famously declared that he would ‘tame’ Bitcoin. Since then, several ETFs have been approved by the SEC. But as exchanges increased the supply of BTC by selling “paper Bitcoin,” questions of market manipulation have started to emerge.

Melamed told Reuters at the time, “We will regulate, make Bitcoin not wild, nor wilder. We’ll tame it into a regular type instrument of trade with rules.”

The exchange-traded fund, or ETF, allows investors to buy into an asset that tracks the price of Bitcoin. But without actually owning the underlying asset directly themselves. In the US, such funds fall under the purview of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Structured similarly to an IOU, an informal document admitting debt, the ETF takes the form of a paper which can be exchanged during the trade process. Observers are concerned whether the goal of paper Bitcoin is to manipulate the underlying asset with the help of the SEC as a regulator.

Bitcoin manipulation: Banks want control

“It’s banks trying to take control but it’s also just the normal system they use,” James Crypto Guru, founder and CEO of crypto platform MagicCraft, told BeInCrypto.

“In a way it does control and manipulate. But the people understand they want Bitcoin from the blockchain and over time their [banks’ BTC holding] size will be much smaller than the overall market,”…