In what seems like a deliberate attempt to manipulate the market allowing for some major insider trading, Coinmarketcap.com drops all Korean exchange data from their market capitalization totals. In doing so they dropped the entire Crypto market capital by $100 Billion. They decided to wait hours after this change took place to announce it on Twitter:
@CoinMarketCap
This morning we excluded some Korean exchanges in price calculations due to the extreme divergence in prices from the rest of the world and limited arbitrage opportunity. We are working on better tools to provide users with the averages that are most relevant to them.
6:02 PM - Jan 8, 2018
The inevitable occurred once people saw the values drop on their website, people sold as they thought some major sell off was occuring.
Now, a website like Coinmarketcap has a responsibility to ensure any change in their data calculations is publically announced long before the new data is displayed. With probably around 99% of all cryptocurrency traders frequently checking CMC for the latest market capitals, it was highly irresponsible of CMC to do this and either they are incompetent and didn’t think about the effects this would have on the markets or they knew exactly what would happen and did it anyway.
It would be a perfect opportunity for some inside trading wouldn’t it?
Insider Trading and market manipulation is nothing new in Cryptocurrency, although no one would admit such an activity it is clear it goes on. The whole space is unregulated, so this was an inevitable side effect. Only a couple weeks ago we saw the Coinbase Bitcoin Cash Fiasco where Coinbase released trading pairs for BCH well before their previously announced launch date, this caused BCH prices to rocket up well over 100% in just hours, the platform then crashed, trading frozen and then the market crashed. Literally millions of dollars lost by many poor unfortunate traders and undoubtedly millions made by those that knew this early launch was to take place.
But hey this is Crypto, where if you don’t look after your own interests and use common sense, you’ll get burnt.
In times of strife alway remember just one thing, HODL!
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