Bitcoin slid down below $6,500, hitting $6,430 at one point while the majority of the crypto market registers red. Meanwhile, WSJ reported that crypto trading bots are manipulating the prices.
Bitcoin dropped to $6,430 while altcoins drop more
Bitcoin today dropped down to $6,430 level at one point. The world’s leading cryptocurrency is slightly down in the past 24-hours while trading between the range of $6,424 and $6,555. At the time of writing, Bitcoin has been sitting at $6,495. With a market cap of $112.8 billion, the daily trading volume rose to $4.58 billion from yesterday’s $3.9 billion.
As for the top cryptocurrencies, both Ethereum (ETH) and XRP are down. Among the top 15, XRP is bearing the biggest losses.
In fact, the majority of the crypto market is in red right now. NEM (XEM) is losing the highest with about 7 percent loss.
A few coins like Noah Coin (NOAH) with the highest gains of over 38 percent, Siacoin (SC) and Decred (DC) are in the green. Hence, the total market cap also took a hit as shown in the graph below.
Also, read: Gold will continue to shine despite the rise in Bitcoin says Morningstar Investment Analyst
Meanwhile, WSJ reports price manipulation by crypto trading bots
Price manipulation has been running rampant in the crypto market as SEC cited it the very reason for not approving the Bitcoin ETF. Task forces have also been created to look into this matter by the authorities.
Now, Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports that crypto trading bots are manipulating the prices. A new report from the office of New York Attorney General Barbara D. Underwood, reveals that crypto exchanges are susceptible to the price manipulation driven by bots.
The co-founder and president of coin issuing company CoinList, Andy Bromberg shared with the media that presently bots are running rampant marketwide.
Stefan Qin, the managing partner at Virgil Capital, a crypto hedge fund is reportedly using its own bots to battle a number of enemy bots. They have also built functions that identify the potentially illegal activities. Qin told the publication that Virgil suffered a harassing bot that targeted ether trades causing losses.
Moreover, Bots are enabling pump and dump schemes as well. Trader Kjetil Eilertsen has developed a tool called Quatloo Trader which is a crypto market manipulation tool. It has a tab “whale tools” which executes abusive strategies like ping pong. This tool allows users to execute buy and sell orders themselves, resulting in fake crypto activity that is known as wash trading and is illegal in the stocks market.
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