Bitcoin: The only free market that no one can stop... No regulatory body to rescue it, no brakes or trading halts, no short-selling bans, and no mercy for crashes!

If you're looking for someone to save you and stop trading, go to other markets.

To understand what happened yesterday with Bitcoin's sharp decline and traders' surrender, you must realize that Bitcoin is among the most free markets compared to stocks and bonds; because it’s a global open market operating 24/7 without centralized authorities imposing a full trading halt or banning short sales during panic.

First: What is the “Free Market”?
- A free market means minimal coercive interventions: no forced trading halts, no administrative price controls, and no bans on certain buy or sell orders except for purely technical reasons.
- In Bitcoin, the price is determined in real-time through buy and sell offers across dozens of exchanges worldwide, with no regulatory body able to press a button to shut down the entire market.

Second: Bitcoin as a 24/7 Open Market
- Bitcoin trading is continuous around the clock, every day, globally, unlike traditional exchanges that operate only limited hours on official working days.
- If a particular exchange (stops trading the BTC/USD pair for )technical or regulatory reasons(, traders can immediately switch to other exchanges or even over-the-counter (OTC) trading ), as there is no central “key” to turn off the entire Bitcoin market.

Third: Circuit Breakers in Stock Markets vs. Their Absence in Bitcoin:
In major stock markets (like the US market), there are “circuit breakers” (:

- In the United States, if the S&P 500 drops 7% in a single session, “Level 1” is triggered, and all stocks are halted for 15 minutes. If it drops 13%, Level 2 is activated, and at 20%, the market may close for the rest of the day.
- During the COVID-19 crisis in March 2020, these circuit breakers were triggered multiple times over a few days, causing trading to halt entirely in the US market more than once with a 7% drop at the start of the session.

The Saudi stock market )Tadawul( sets daily price fluctuation limits at 10% for most stocks in the main market )TASI(, where a stock’s price cannot rise or fall more than 10% from the previous close during a single session, or trading is restricted at that limit.
- This prevents sharp volatility, unlike Bitcoin, which allows a 10% or more drop or rise without daily central restrictions.

- As for Bitcoin:
- There is no global regulatory authority with the power to halt Bitcoin trading entirely if the price drops 7% or 20%; the price can fall 30–40% within hours without a forced shutdown.
- Some crypto platforms have started discussing or implementing limited forms of “circuit breakers” at the platform level )such as restricting forced liquidations in contracts or freezing certain order types(, but these are not mandatory network-wide mechanisms nor are they implemented across all exchanges.

Practical example: COVID-2020:
- In March 2020:
- The US stock market: circuit breakers triggered 4 times over 8 days, with 15-minute halts each time when the S&P 500 dropped 7%.
- Bitcoin: experienced a sharp crash )“Black Thursday”( with a 40% drop within hours on some platforms without a centralized market halt, only technical issues or local policies on certain exchanges.

Fourth: Banning or restricting short-selling in stocks vs. Bitcoin’s flexibility:
- In traditional markets:
- During crises, regulators often ban )Short Selling( or heavily restrict it under the pretext of protecting prices and preventing “speculators” from deepening the decline.
- In September 2008, the US SEC temporarily banned most short sales on about 1,000 financial stocks, reducing short activity in those stocks by about 77%, negatively impacting market liquidity and pricing quality.

- In Bitcoin:
- No global regulatory body can ban “shorting Bitcoin” itself; there are always platforms, derivatives, and products )futures, perpetual contracts, options( that allow betting on both upward and downward movements, even if some countries restrict certain parts locally.
- Even if a country bans shorting certain contracts, traders can move to other platforms outside that country, because Bitcoin’s market isn’t tied to a single exchange or overseen by a single national authority.

Fifth: Concrete examples highlighting Bitcoin’s “freedom”:
- Example 1 – Sharp decline without a full halt:
In Bitcoin’s historic crashes, which saw drops of over 10% in a single day )and dozens of such cases recorded since 2016(, there has been no global system that stops trading once the threshold is reached.