In an essay titled "Price Manipulation in the Bitcoin Ecosystem," co-authored by the School of Computer Science at the University of Tulsa and the Tel Aviv University School of Economics in Israel, four researchers based on the collapse of the 2014 Virtual Currency Exchange The trading data leaked by Mt.Gox found that there was a suspicion of manipulating the price of 'robot' trading behind the sharp rise in bitcoin in late 2013.
As of the end of 2013, the exchange rate of the U.S. dollar against the Bitcoin rose from 150 U.S. dollars to more than 1,000 U.S. dollars in two months. As a result, the researchers studied two suspicious trading time periods between February and November 2013 and found that here, About 600,000 bitcoins (about 188 million U.S. dollars) were acquired by suspicious agents during the second suspicious transaction period, with the U.S. dollar up by an average of 20 U.S. dollars against bitcoin.
"When suspicious transactions occur, the price of bitcoin rises 4% on average every day, compared with a modest drop in bitcoin prices in the absence of suspicious transactions." The researchers also calculated that on the date of the study 55% of bitcoin prices have risen, while in the case of suspicious transactions, the proportion rose to as high as 79%.
As a result, researchers believe that the crazy rise in bitcoin prices may be due to suspicious transaction manipulation prices.
In this essay, researchers analyzed 18 million trading data leaked during the year and found that price manipulation was mainly implemented by two 'robots', Markus and Willy, who did not actually own the real Bitcoin
The researchers at the time said Bitcoin markets were limited in depth at that time and Mt.Gox's use of 'robotics' for fake trades could make the market look more dynamic because 'open' trading volume would not exclude the 'robot' volume.
The study found that Markus bought a total of 335,898 bitcoin, worth about $ 76 million, between February 14 and September 27, 2013. Willy used 49 different accounts, each of which was bought The $ 2.5 million bitcoin goes offline, followed by the next account, and repeats the same operation.
At Markus' most actively traded timeframe, the daily trading volume of Mt.Gox is 42,000 bitcoins a day, and the average daily price increase of bitcoin for the four major exchanges of Mt.Gox, Bitstamp, Bitfinex and BTC-e At 1.9% -2.9%. In the 'robot' inactive period, the daily trading volume of Mt.Gox was only 17,400 and the average revenue from trading bitcoins was slightly lower.
When Willy became active, the prices of bitcoin on the four exchanges rose 4.8% -5.0% on average per day. When it was inactive, the prices of all four exchanges also fell slightly.
Another important finding in the article is that in 'robotically' active trading sessions, the volume of transactions has increased much more than their own contribution, because the increase signals the market to encourage real investors Entry transaction.
It is worth noting that Mt.Gox Exchange was the largest virtual money exchange in the world at that time, accounting for 80% of global bitcoin transactions. Just after the soaring surge in late 13, in February 2014, Mt.Gox made a public statement Said it was lost by the 750,000 bitcoin customers' deposits on the exchange and its own 100,000 bitcoin due to a hacker attack at exactly the time of the late turnaround in late 2013.
Since then, in August 2015, Tokyo police arrested Mt.Gox chief executive Mark Karpuller for allegedly manipulating account data and embezzling public funds, the Japanese media reported at the time that the Japanese prosecutors' indictment showed that Karp Le account from the company under the management of customer funds account for a total of about 321 million yen remitted funds to external accounts, there are acts of encroachment.