Looking through Zero Hedge today and came across this very enlightening article about Bitcoin and possible manipulation. He brings up past history in the year 2014 when one mysterious individual purchased 270,000 Bitcoin and seemed to help in the valuation of Bitcoin. TODAY there is a new kid on the BLOCK doing the same thing.
SPOOFING. Apparently there is a new kid in town that has been manipulating the price of BITCOIN once again. Here is a quote from today's article.
"It now appears that a spoofer has once again emerged, only this time in Bitcoin.
For those unfamiliar, spoofing is simple: it is the illegal practice of placing a large buy order just below other buy orders, or a large sell order just above other sell orders, then cancelling if it appears that the order is about to be hit or lifted. The idea is to make traders think that somebody with deep pockets is getting ready to buy or sell, in hopes of moving the market. If traders see a sell order of 2000 Bitcoin they may rush to panic sell before the whale crashes the price. And vice versa on the bid-side.
As an example of Spoofy's trading pattern, here is a breakdown of a typical "trade" by the mysterious entity as noted by BitCrypto'ed who first spotted the irregular activity: Spoofy is a regular trader (or a group of traders) who engages in the following practices:
Places large bids ($2 million and up) for Bitcoin, usually just under a smaller bid order, only to remove them once someone starts to sell. These orders usually have a lifetime of minutes, or sometimes as short as 5–10 seconds to manipulate the price up (more common)
Places large asks ($2 million and up), for Bitcoin when he wants the price to go down, or stop going up (less common)
Occasionally ‘Spoofy’ will allow orders deep in the orderbooks to remain for a few hours, usually $50–$100 below the current price. For example, during the recovery above $2,000, he had roughly 4,000 BTC of false orders in the $1,900 range that were unlikely to execute, and ultimately were never executed.
As noted above, spoofing is actually illegal - as ultimately the trader has no intention of ever executing the publicized trade - but as Bitcoin markets are largely unregulated, it’s a very common practice.
What is unusual in this case is the nearly unlimited bankroll that Spoofy has at his disposal: He regularly places orders approaching $60 million."
Article by ZERO HEDGE
Thoughts? Will bitcoin crash due to this spoofer's outcome? Time will tell. I expect Bitcoin to drop soon. Cheers.
(image off of google imaging) - I added the word "spoofing"