US CFTC asks Coinbase, Kraken, Bitstamp, ItBit about price manipulation

The United States Commodities Futures and Trading Commission has requested access to the certain financial information from large exchanges - Bitstamp, Kraken, Coinbase and ItBit. All these four platforms provide reference for the CME futures. Apparently, something did not match in the calculations of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the public prices posted on these exchanges, which led to the questions from the CFTC. It is a direct responsibility of the latter organization to eliminate futures manipulations.

Bitcoin is now falling, as seen from the data on price reference services. Ethereum and other altcoins are, too, in the negative phase of price motion. A part of the media outlets tried to connect this market event to several factors, including the hack of a relatively small Coinrail. From what has been described above, one can deduce that regulatory questions to several key exchanges probably have more to do with the general market behavior.

The theory about other factors than Coinrail hack influencing the price of Bitcoin has been formulated before the first report of Bitnewstoday on the same theme. Observers deem the size of this brokerage too small to serve as a black swan for the market.

It is unlikely that the hacking of an insignificant exchange trading a minor altcoin would cause #Bitcoin and all other #cryptos to slash #billions of #dollars from their #market caps. But that is pretty much what has just happened over the past few hours.

— Crypto Experts (@CryptoExpertsNL) June 10, 2018

If the existence of the manipulations is confirmed in the future, this may make CME reconsider its approach towards the market of digital currency, which, in turn, will leave Bitcoin without one of the main reasons of its growth at the end of 2017 and with much less chances to restore to those values.

At the press time, it remains unknown if the exchanges have already provided this info to the CFTC, although some reports tell they had time to do so since January.

Image courtesy of WSJ