[2018-05-24] U.S. Department of Justice Set to Probe Suspected Bitcoin Price Man

[BitcoinArsenal]

The two major points of inquiry for the probe are spoofing and wash trading. Spoofing refers to flooding the market with fake orders, tricking other traders in the process while wash trading involves creating false volumes that overvalue the market. Full article on Bitcoinist

[ulhaq]

This can only happen with the futures market that the CFTC has set up. It is impossible with bitcoin itself because all transactions are irreversible.

[Karartma1]

The Justice Department is said to be looking into techniques used to bump up prices including spoofing, in which traders flood the market with fake orders that are never fulfilled and wash trading, which gives a false impression of market demand when a buyer purchases against themselves, tempting others to follow suit.

Interesting 

[ulhaq]

This can only happen with the futures market that the CFTC has set up. It is impossible with bitcoin itself because all transactions are irreversible.

I have to correct myself. Since order books are public, one can indeed use spoofing. But anyone can get around being personally cheated by not paying attention to order books.

[Kprawn]

I am VERY glad that this is done. I have long since expected that people are "gaming" the system and that the Bitcoin price is

being manipulated to support positions in the Futures markets. I even suspect that people are synchronizing dumps on several

exchanges to artificially influence the price. {triggering fake dumps and throwing bots into panic modes} This will just get out

of hand, if it is not stopped now.     ...We see almost no bad news and the price just keep on going down. 

[BitHodler]

We see almost no bad news and the price just keep on going down. 

That's a sign for the smart to buy the dip as soon as possible.

I think that there is one exchange specifically contributing to manipulative behavior due to all its tools and features, and that exchange is called BitMEX. This exchange alone has a $2.6 billion 24h BTC/USD volume.

If we look at the volumes of the other large exchanges, then there are only a few exchanges having a 24h volume of around $200 million. The rest all have volumes far below that. It's quite an interesting development.

Not that long ago BitMEXs 24h volume even exceeded the $5 billion mark. 

[Samarkand]

...
I think that there is one exchange specifically contributing to manipulative behavior due to all its tools and features, and that exchange is called BitMEX. This exchange alone has a $2.6 billion 24h BTC/USD volume.

If we look at the volumes of the other large exchanges, then there are only a few exchanges having a 24h volume of around $200 million. The rest all have volumes far below that. It's quite an interesting development.

Not that long ago BitMEXs 24h volume even exceeded the $5 billion mark. 

I also suspect that BitMEX is one of the exchanges where manipulation is rampant.
If you haven´t seen this Medium article, you should definitely take a look at it:
https://medium.com/@mattcollburner/bitmex-insiders-caught-in-a-web-of-lies-6d9b90baa693

Of course this could be FUD, but it seems very shady to me if a subsidiary of BitMEX is
trading on the same platform that the retail customers use (this opens up all
kind of possible scams like frontrunning, hunting stops and so on).