It is. You have to think this way. Until last cylce Bitcoin simply didn't have the market capitalisation for "smart money" to take tampering with it serious enough. In their world expected gains have to exceed expected fines or they're not interested. Today any brokerage stands to makes tens of millions by tampering with Bitccoin vs a few million fine.

if you look at the violation trackers you'll find that JPM, BlackRock and their friends pay billions in findes when rigging the commodity markets and that's what Bitcoin is for them, a commodity.