Snapshot: Social media is buzzing with speculation that institutions deliberately sank Bitcoin’s price to spook retail and hoover up digital assets at a discount. The idea isn’t baseless, but on closer inspection, the evidence is thin.
Did Wall Street crash crypto so it could gobble up your coins? A lot of people seem to think so. In the wake of Bitcoin’s (CRYPTO: BTC) brutal Q4 2025 plunge, conspiracy theories are bubbling.
Viral X threads accuse two big names of staging a virtual heist: engineering fear to flush out retail holders, accumulate cheap BTC, and launch ETFs on the rebound.
The timeline looks suspicious: MSCI’s (NYSE:MSCI) October proposal to boot crypto treasury firms like MicroStrategy (NASDAQ:MSTR) from indexes triggers a crash; three months of pain ensue; then, on January 6, 2026, Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) files for spot Bitcoin and Solana ETFs. Hours later, MSCI reverses course.
Hints of dark dealings or just the cold reality of market mechanics at work? Let’s try to separate rumor from reality.
Myth 1: MSCI and Morgan Stanley Are Puppet Masters in a Grand Collusion
The Rumor: These two entities, tied by history (MSCI spun out of Morgan Stanley in 2007), orchestrated the dip. MSCI created fear with its proposal, suppressing prices so Morgan Stanley could buy low before filing ETFs and yanking the threat.
Reality: The timing looks bad and two …