Pro-XRP Lawyer Deaton Drops Bombshell: JPMorgan Manipulating Bitcoin Just Like Silver
JPMorgan's playing the same old Wall Street game—only this time, the target's digital.
The Accusation Hits
Prominent crypto attorney John Deaton just leveled a massive allegation against banking giant JPMorgan. He claims the firm is actively manipulating the Bitcoin market, drawing a direct parallel to its historical involvement in silver market suppression. It's a charge that cuts to the heart of crypto's promise: decentralization versus entrenched financial power.
A Pattern of Control?
Deaton's argument isn't plucked from thin air. It leans on the bank's documented history with commodities. The suggestion is simple—old habits die hard. If they did it with a physical asset like silver, what's stopping them in the unregulated, opaque corners of crypto trading? It bypasses the 'too big to fail' playbook and jumps straight to 'too big to play fair.'
Why This Matters Now
This isn't just lawyerly gossip. The claim strikes during a pivotal moment for Bitcoin's legitimacy. Every whisper of manipulation fuels the skeptics and puts regulators on higher alert. It forces a brutal question: is the 'digital gold' narrative being undercut by the very traditional forces it sought to replace?
The Finance Jab
Because nothing says 'trust us' like a century-old bank with a rap sheet longer than a blockchain ledger—some traditions, it seems, are truly immutable.
The ball's now in the court of regulators and the market. Will this accusation gain traction, or get buried under a avalanche of denial and complex derivatives? One thing's clear: the fight for crypto's soul just got a lot more personal.
Are Bitcoin, XRP And Altcoins Manipulated?
“Novogratz is right — the math isn’t mathing,” Deaton wrote on X. “When gold hits all-time highs and bitcoin stalls despite the same macro tailwinds + a very friendly crypto administration — you have to look at the paper markets. We’ve seen this movie before with Silver — heavy shorting via futures can suppress price action even when physical demand is through the roof.”
He pushed the argument further, casting the moment as a structural shift rather than a temporary market quirk. “I believe we are seeing the same bank playbook being run on BTC. I also believe we are watching the Financialization of Bitcoin and Crypto in real-time,” Deaton said.
“The same players who spent years suppressing Silver prices with paper contracts are now using the same tools on BTC and other crypto assets. It’s not a failure of the tech — it’s a coordinated effort by the old guard to keep the Digital Gold narrative in a cage.”
Deaton also tied market-structure claims to the policy fight in Washington, pointing to a widening rift between large banks and crypto-native firms. “We see the old guard — JPMorgan and Jamie Dimon — publicly attacking the new guard — Coinbase and Brian Armstrong,” he wrote, arguing banks were simultaneously lobbying to slow crypto legislation while applying similar leverage in derivatives markets.
While Deaton’s bitcoin claim is an allegation, JPMorgan has faced major penalties tied to manipulative conduct in precious-metals futures.
In September 2020, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission ordered JPMorgan Chase & Co. and subsidiaries to pay $920.2 million (including $311.7 million in restitution, $172.0 million in disgorgement, and a $436.4 million civil monetary penalty) for manipulative and deceptive conduct and spoofing in precious metals and US Treasury futures that the CFTC said spanned “at least eight years.”
The Department of Justice, in a parallel resolution, said JPMorgan entered into a deferred prosecution agreement tied to two wire-fraud counts and paid more than $920 million in combined penalties, disgorgement, and victim compensation. DOJ court documents described the precious-metals scheme as occurring roughly between March 2008 and August 2016, involving unlawful trading in markets including gold and silver futures.
Deaton’s post lands as silver itself has been violently repriced. Spot silver hit a record $121.64 on Jan.29 before sliding sharply down to around $73.575 on February 5, 2026. The current rumor making the rounds on X is simple: JPMorgan opened large shorts around the $120 top, then covered into the slide NEAR $78 as delivery hit.
At press time, XRP traded at $1.43.
