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BitPanda is the latest crypto entity to come under speculation for making “fake trade swaps,” on behalf of the account holder.
A Medium user named Matt, alleged in his blog that the European retail cryptocurrency broker makes fake trades on the user’s behalf on the account when a digital asset soars so that the user doesn’t make any profit. He added that subsequently, the trading platform blocks the user’s account.
According to the blog post, he deposited 500 Euros to buy Litecoin [LTC], following which the account was credited with 9.53 LTC.
Source: Medium
However, at around 2 am, an “unauthorized swap trade” appeared on his account portfolio. In case of a swap, the user is generally notified by the platform. However, he claimed that he received no such notification. When contacted, the platform’s customer service allegedly denied any security issue. Matt further added,
“Then when I look at the charts, It became “suspicious ” that my ghost swap appeared during a LTC Bullish peak. Then it made sense when in fear, market makers [BitPanda] can tweak the prices a bit but not a lot so what I assume they did here is swap to a less volatile currency [USD] in order to cover their possible loss and execute unauthorized trades in my account when they can possibly lose a lot of money.”
To verify if the previous swap was fraudulent, he did a test-swap from BTC to LTC, for which he received a notification email.
This news comes after BitWise Asset Management notified US Securities Exchange Commission [SEC] that 95% of the trading volume reported by unregulated crypto exchanges are either fake or non-economic in nature. The report also categorized Coinbase as a real exchange, and deemed CoinBene as a suspicious crypto entity.