Do exchanges manipulate order books, add fake transactions?

[1Referee]

Yep. The most obvious case was back in 2014 when I was still into altcoin trading. It was on Bittrex exchange. I wanted to execute a sell order in a certain altcoin market, and each time I clicked my entire balance to sell it, a screen pops up asking me to confirm that specific action (which is normal), and at that moment certain buy orders instantly vanished. As soon as I cancelled my sell order, the exact same buy orders came back as quick as they were gone. I repeated this several times, and each time exactly the same happened. No coincidence.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Wouldn't surprise me in the least, because I have no idea who runs these exchanges.  Could be nerds in momses' basement for all I know, and if that's the case there's nothing stopping mommmma's boys from manipulating everything.  Look at Karpeles and his wagonload of BS.

[Strongkored]

exchange can do anything for their website, and all they do is to make their website look like have many transaction, but we dont have evidence to prove it cause only exchange owner know about it, if you dont want to involved in fake transaction should trading in big exchange

[CraigWrightBTC]

I think they can do it, manipulation data and adds fake volume transaction, because we don't have control on the markets and there are not markets that show management markets only owners and administrators who can do it.

[capoeira]

sure.
that's why "we all" love no regulation

[gentlemand]

sure.
that's why "we all" love no regulation

Don't forget the 'free market' too. I love being free enough to have coins taken away by faceless pricks with no comebacks.

[satmas]

I don't think that the more reputable exchanges would do this as if they did this and were caught, they more then likely wouldn't have users going over to the exchange since that would show that the exchange can't be trusted.

[someone111]

How could they be caught? I wouldn't know how anyone could detect it.

[Serpens66]

How could they be caught? I wouldn't know how anyone could detect it.

some exchanges are quite stupid when placing orders thereself.
I already detected some, most do not exist anymore, so it really are mostly small exchanges with a few users.

I detected it by finding a pattern in placing orders. One for example always placed big buy orders (several > 30 BTC) always 5€ below the best user order.
And since they did not build in a limit and there were only very few user orders, I placed a buy order at 570€/BTC (while it was 500€ at other exchanges), let the exchange place their big orders at 565€/BTC, quickly removed my orders and placed a sell order for 565€/BTc which was filled.
I did this quite often and made good profit. But of course the exchange refused to pay out the money/btc I made , reverted everything back and build in a limit.

At bigger exchanges it might be much harder to detect such activity.

[dunfida]

How could they be caught? I wouldn't know how anyone could detect it.

some exchanges are quite stupid when placing orders thereself.
I already detected some, most do not exist anymore, so it really are mostly small exchanges with a few users.

I detected it by finding a pattern in placing orders. One for example always placed big buy orders (several > 30 BTC) always 5€ below the best user order.
And since they did not build in a limit and there were only very few user orders, I placed a buy order at 570€/BTC (while it was 500€ at other exchanges), let the exchange place their big orders at 565€/BTC, quickly removed my orders and placed a sell order for 565€/BTc which was filled.
I did this quite often and made good profit. But of course the exchange refused to pay out the money/btc I made , reverted everything back and build in a limit.

At bigger exchanges it might be much harder to detect such activity.

Sad to hear  that  they didnt pay  you on the profit youve made hence they are  aware that you already detected their  activity/plans but   with  big exchanges  it wont be recognizable  at all because lots  of traders   are  lurking there and  you wont notice if its being  manipulated.

[HeroCat]

I think that exchanges do not add fake transactions, only so called BTC doubler scam sites can add fake transactions. But you can search in the forum largest exchanges, and then trust only to largest BTC exchanges - check their websites too. For example Poloniex exchange - https://poloniex.com/ have current online users counter. 

[Dudeperfect]

I don’t think so and I never experienced anything like that. Yes exchanges give some free space for bots and bots place orders which are far less than we do but those are not fake orders but those are not from human traders.

Credibility is biggest asset of anyone and same about exchanges so I don’t think any genuine exchange manipulate orders to support any pump and dump scheme. Although it is possible for them with some line of code.

[Caladonian]

I don’t think so and I never experienced anything like that. Yes exchanges give some free space for bots and bots place orders which are far less than we do but those are not fake orders but those are not from human traders.

Credibility is biggest asset of anyone and same about exchanges so I don’t think any genuine exchange manipulate orders to support any pump and dump scheme. Although it is possible for them with some line of code.

exactly they have capability but for sure they wont do that to support pnd coin they will think of their trust rate and for sure it will not be a good impact to their business.

[mirakal]

The big question is, why would they manipulate, do they get more than they can get if they will not manipulate. I think that should be realize by the OP, and when you are a trading site your reputation is very important so you should maintain your good reputation to protect your investment and continue a profitable business.

[jack1111]

I do not think so , and why they will do it ? according to my knowledge this manipulating did not happen before , because the major exchanges earn a lot of money just from trading fees , they do not need to manipulate and risk their reputations , maybe a small exchange did that , but I do not have information.

[erikalui]

It won't happen in case of trusted exchanges that have been running since years and have over 1000+ users who keep trading daily but new and unknown exchanges can definitely place fake reviews and transactions to make their website look real. You can easily analyse a website based on this transactions and some people also pay users to trade on their websites and then turn untrustworthy. It all depends on the reputation of such exchanges.

[ultrloa]

Nope, they would not do that and surely they wouldn't do faking since they don't have any tie to any of those not unless if they own that coins who's listed on their exchange but i don't see any exchangers do that since it can loose their credibility as exchanger themselves, but i do believe the only one who can fake that volume is only the dev himself because he is the one who can manipulate it without even asking the traders or community, and it is used by some devs to make their coin more appealing.

[mindrust]

They can do that. But do they? The exchanges where i trade, I haven't caught anything suspicious yet. If they are not stupid, you won't be able to catch them anyways.

Gox did it. And did it waaay obviously. They pumped pumped pumped pumped, and then they blew up >>> to da mooon!

[talkbitcoin]

They can do that. But do they? The exchanges where i trade, I haven't caught anything suspicious yet. If they are not stupid, you won't be able to catch them anyways.

Gox did it. And did it waaay obviously. They pumped pumped pumped pumped, and then they blew up >>> to da mooon!

gox did it because it was the only exchanger in that time that was really big and successful but these days things have became more decentralized and they cannot do the manipulation easily anymore.

but they still do manipulate the prices especially in the altcoin markets and in big exchanges like poloniex which are almost center of every altcoin price.

[Johnyloco]

Yes there are some exchanges doing this. Though it's hard to find, because it could be another trader with a bot or the exchange itself. Sometimes when looking at a single currency pair, you can easily see that the price is manipulated (most at altcoins)