Bitcoin mining in the crypto crash: The mining companies’ creative accounting

Isn't shorting a market then taking actions which directly cause the market to crash illegal?

If you sell a large quantity (whether regular selling or short selling), it will drive the price down. If you short sell before regular selling, it will drive the price down even before you start your regular selling. Any gain from short selling will be offset by the lower price you get from your regular selling.

Isn't the difficulty adjust so roughly the same amount of bitcoin is being mined regardless of the number of miners? So isn't there going to be an equivalent amount of bitcoin being dumped on the market, whether it's by one large farmer or several small farmers?

so,

1. the market is surprisingly thin, it doesn't take a lot of bitcoin to knock the price down - particularly with the shortage of retail dollars.

2. there's no such thing as "just short" in bitcoin, the venues for doing so are unregulated casinos with an extensive track record of just screwing their own customers over.

this is not an orderly or well-regulated market in any regard