The manipulation of physical markets by paper markets (such as gold and silver) is coming to an end. The overhead being incurred is huge.

Basically the same people are running a buyer and a seller. And they are selling bare naked shorts (a short that has nothing backing it, but it can just be paid with dollars if called) and they are buying them. They are selling an amount in a day that is over the amount mined in a year.

They also have physical gold/silver that they drip into the market to cover actual real futures contracts.
(but first, they will often pay these guys 3x the amount in paper to not take the physical)

That is how the manipulation is done and can keep going.

But, as you said with bitcoin, it is really easy to know where the thing is and who has it. There is no fooling us with a three card montee.