Research: Markus and Willy, bots at Mt Gox, multiplied the BTC price by 10 back in 2013

The article in the Journal of Monetary Economics called Price Manipulation in Bitcoin Ecosystem tells about yet another fraud committed by either managers or just members of Mt Gox, the infamous cryptocurrency exchange. The collapse of this platform has been one of the most disastrous events the Bitcoin community has ever had, but before this happened, the exchange managers or users used special trading bots to pump the price of Bitcoin 10 times more.

Those bots were called Markus and Willy, and they did not even own Bitcoins they traded, which makes the situation even more preposterous: such activities would not have happened on any traditional asset market.

The authors of this research post a warning after this analysis. They warn about the increased number of cryptocurrencies, and some of them might become involved in frauds similar to this one.

Reasons why notable market figures, like the leader of Goldman Sachs, are suspicious towards Bitcoin, originate from fears about frauds like these. The big-scale funds and organizations simply do not want to lose their funds on an asset which is not regulated by any central authority.