Opinion by: Tracy Jin, Chief Operating Officer, Mexc
Market manipulation is everywhere and nothing can be seen. This is an invisible threat that affects the crypto and traditional market, leaving ordinary merchants counting costs. Sometimes, manipulation is obvious – bad tokens that are pumped high before throwing away quickly – but often, it’s subtler and harder to see.
More about these schemes is no longer the domain of rogue whales or amateur pump groups. The signs are increasingly pointing to highly organized, well-funded networks that link activities to entire centralized exchanges, derivatives platforms, and onchain ecosystems. As these actors grow in sophistication, their threat to market integrity expands significantly.
A story that is as old as time
Market manipulation is as old as the markets themselves. In ancient Greece, a philosopher named Thales of Miletus used his knowledge of weather patterns to predict an olive bumper yield, quietly leasing all olive pressures in the region at a low rate before the start of time. Then, when the harvest came in, and demanded the presses, he rented it at the rising prices, pouring the difference.
For a more recent example in history, even 300 years in the past, see The South Sea Company Bubble Where company directors have thrown shares in peak prices, leaving regular investors. Or the Dutch tulip bubble of a century earlier.
Market manipulation exists in crypto because the first exchanges come up to the flow around 2011. Those around then may concern The pump-and-dump schemes In the BTC-E exchange that has been an emerior of a well-known businessman called Fontas. Or they could remember the bear whale, that 30,000 BTC sells the wall crashing into the market at a time where the total day -to -day trading volume is less than $ 30 million -for all Crypto combined. While not technically manipulating the market, it has shown how easy an individual can move the crypto market.
Fast forward today, and Crypto is a multi-trillion dollar asset class, which renders manipulation of large assets that are almost impossible for solitary whales. But when a group of stunning entrepreneurs claims, it is still possible to move the markets-and the well-inspiors are just doing that.
Manipulators are moving
The days when a single whale can set a BTC -selling wall that lasted weeks to rot have long disappeared. While crypto is magnitude of more fluids these days, it is more guilty. It presents opportunities to businessmen who hunt in packs to move markets to their advantage. Often working through private telegram groups, people coordinate activities that target markets where they can have the most impact. The trend features the growing participation of major players in market manipulation schemes, presenting a new level of risk for the crypto industry.
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In February, analyst James Cryptoguru warned of major manipulation risks involving bitcoin ETF spots. He explained that these instruments could put down pressure on bitcoin prices – especially if traditional financial markets are closed. Such an approach can trigger fluids to leveraged merchants and create temporary imbalance, allowing large players to accumulate BTC and ETH at discount prices.
Because the crypto-both onchain and on-exchange-are quite interrelated, the effects of the ripple of a successful manipulation attempt are far and wide. If a trading pair queried by APIs for feeding other markets would knock on a centralized exchange, it could generate arbitration opportunities elsewhere, including Perps markets. As a result, an attack can be initiated with one exchange, and the revenues claimed to another, making it very difficult to catch the culprits.
The integrity of the cryptocurrency market is faced with rising risk. Coordinated groups have deep pockets, technical tools, and cross-platform access to implementation and mask complex operations. The disturbing part is that most exchanges remain reactive by design because it is almost impossible to prevent market manipulation. As a result, the attacks have a high chance of maintaining the advantage, even the window where they are free to run the amok becomes smaller.
Not all manipulators destroy the rules
Just as the Thales of Miletus does not ruin the rules when he or she is profitable during the olive period, most of what constitutes crypto manipulation is not illegal. When a large fund begins to buy a particular token through one of their public wallets to attract attention – is the manipulation? Or when market makers are just beyond the matching bid-ask spread to actively propping up the price of a token at the request of a project? There are many things moving in the markets, but most things are not illegal – at least for now.
While the moral code governs influencers, market makers, trading companies, and other players who are serious size may debate in length, other cases require less disturbance. The last time anyone checked, using thousands of exchange -use -selves of twelve users to provoke a particular possession is flawless manipulation. The exchanges, assisted by the more sophisticated AI-powered tooling, are resistant to the back.
The days when a user will cause a fight in the markets can be completed. The threat is not, however, dissipated in multichein, multi-exchange ea-Dumami it. As a result, the exchanges are now locked in a whack-a-mol game, trying to see suspicious behavior started by hundreds or thousands of accounts at once.
Fortunately, exchanges do not have to do so alone, as shown by successful cooperation cases. When the Bybit was that -hack in early 2025, other platforms Step To lend ETH and help it meet its obligations in removing it – a rare but strong sign of unity in the face of crisis.
As well as funded, organized groups continue to test the system, one thing becomes clear: market manipulation can be relatively easy-but doing so without notice is especially difficult. Collective monitoring, data sharing, and early discovery become the most effective tool in cautioning the integrity of the crypto trading ecosystem.
Opinion by: Tracy Jin, Chief Operating Officer, Mexc.
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be done as legal or investment advice. The views, attitudes, and opinions expressed here are unique and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of the cointelegraph.
