Well this is actually welcome news and about time something like this happened. I have written before about bitcoin price and how the centralized exchanges can be dishonest and risky. In this particular case the U.S Department of Justice has opened a criminal case according to Bloomberg (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-24/bitcoin-manipulation-is-said-to-be-focus-of-u-s-criminal-probe)
They say the criminal investigation is looking into illegal practices that can influence the prices of Bitcoin by traders. They are looking into whether traders are manipulating prices by collusion, spoofing etc. Well I think the issue is not with traders but with exchanges. The exchanges are the guardians or gatekeepers. None of them are truly audited for activity and many exhibit potentially unethical behavior in the way they handle orders, front run clients, practice price manipulation and allow traders to do unethical activity as long as its profitable for them. Crypto exchanges make huge profits and it is in their interest to have huge trade volumes and the price of bitcoin swing wildly. It would not be uncommon to find that collaboration occurs between exchanges as some share order books and liquidity.
The answer is quite simple as to whether traders and exchanges are conducting illegal activity and the answer is YES. The behavior that exchanges and large traders practice would not be acceptable in the Forex or securities market. As I speak bitcoin is trading 5% down. Oh and its no coincidence that bitcoin is trading down over last few days ahead of tomorrow (May 25th) bitcoin futures expiry:
http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/equity-index/us-index/bitcoin_product_calendar_futures.html
This whole manipulation stinks and is out of control :-(
Lets hope Bitcoin trading activity can be cleaned up now and we don't have to watch the thousandth YouTube video on how Bitcoin price is being manipulated when we all already know this is true :-)
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