Opinion: Tracy Jin, MEXC Chief Operating Officer
Market manipulation is everywhere, but you can’t see it anywhere. It is an invisible threat to affect encryption and traditional markets. Sometimes the operation is obvious. Non -oil tokens are often pumped before the non -oil token is pumped quickly, but it is often subtle and more difficult to detect.
More importantly, this system is no longer the area of the thieves or amateur pump groups. Signs are gradually pointed out a network that adjusts high funds to adjust activities in central exchange, derivatives platforms, and onChain ecosystems. As these actors grow elaborately, their threats to market integrity expand exponentially.
A story that is as old as time
Market manipulation is as old as the market itself. In ancient Greece, the philosopher named Miletus used the knowledge of the weather pattern to predict the harvest of bumper olive and quietly rented all the olive presses in the area before the season began. Then, when the harvest came in and the demand for presses soared, he sent a difference by renting at a inflated price.
For 300 years recently, please refer to the bubble of the Namhae company where the company’s director abandoned its stock at the highest price for recent historical cases. Or the Dutch tulip bubble one century ago.
Since the first exchange began around 2011, the market manipulation existed in Crypto. Those who were around at that time could recall the pump and dump system of the BTC-E Exchange, which was coordinated by an infamous merchant named Fontas. Or they will remember the Bear Whale, where the 30,000 BTC sales wall crashed into the market in the time when the total daily trading volume was less than $ 30 million for all encryption. Although not technically manipulated, it showed how easily a person can move the encryption market.
Going forward as soon as today, Crypto is a multiple dollar asset class that renders a large asset that is almost impossible for solitary whales. But if a wicked trader group teams up, you can still move the market, and well -organized insiders are doing so.
The operating machine moves
The days when a whale could set up a BTC sales wall has long disappeared. Encryption is more liquid these days, but it is much more engraved. This provides opportunities for enterprising traders who hunt packs and move the market. Often working through a personal telegram group, people are adjusted to the market that can have the biggest impact. This trend emphasizes the increase in the participation of major companies in the market manipulation system, suggesting a new level of risk to the encryption industry.
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In February, analyst James Cryptoguru warned of the massive risk of the Spot Bitcoin ETF. He explained that these tools can reduce pressure on the price of Bitcoin, especially when traditional financial markets are closed. This strategy causes liquidation between leverage traders and causes temporary imbalances, allowing large players to accumulate BTC and ETH at discounted prices.
Since the encryption of OnChain and On-Exchange is interconnected, the ripple effect of successful operation attempts is much broader. If the pairs queryed by the API are not synchronized in one centralized exchange to supply to other markets, you can create arbitrage opportunities in other places, including the Perps market. As a result, the attack can begin in one exchange, and the profit is charged from another exchange and is very difficult to catch the culprit.
The integrity of the cryptocurrency market increases the risk. The adjusted groups include cross -platform access to run and mask deep pockets, technical tools and complex tasks. The problem is that most exchange is virtually impossible to prevent market manipulation, so it maintains reactivity by design. As a result, the attacker is likely to maintain this even if the window that AMOK can run freely is getting smaller.
Not all manipulators violate the rules
Just as Miletus’s with the rules when the olive season benefits, most of the encryption manipulation is not illegal. When a large fund begins to buy a specific token through one of the public wallets to attract attention -that manipulation? Or when a market manufacturer actively raises the price of tokens at the request of a project beyond just consistent with the bidder spread? Many things move the market, but most of them are not illegal -at least not now.
Influential people, market manufacturers, trading companies, and moral laws that dominate other players can be discussed for a long time, but in other cases, nuances are required. It is a shameless manipulation that dozens of users used thousands of exchange accounts to expand certain assets using employees as employees. Increasingly, the exchange caused by more sophisticated AI -based tooling is fighting back.
It may have been over the day when a user can cause physical injury in the market. But in the era of multiple exchange, threats were not produced. As a result, the exchange is now submerged in the WHACK-A-MOLE game by trying to detect both suspicious behaviors that started with hundreds or thousands of accounts.
Thank you, as you can see from a successful collaboration case, you don’t have to do it alone. When BYBIT was hacked in early 2025, other platforms borrowed ETH and helped withdraw their obligations. This is a sign of a rare but powerful solidarity faced with a crisis.
Highly organized groups that support funds continue to test the system. One thing is clear. Market manipulation is relatively easy. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to do without detection. Group boundaries, data sharing and early detection are the most effective tools for protecting the integrity of the encryption trading ecosystem.
Opinion: Tracy Jin, MEXC chief operating officer.
This article is for general information purposes and should not be considered legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.