Opinion: Tracy Jin, Operational Director, MEXC

Market manipulation is everywhere, but you can not see it anywhere. This is an concealed threat affecting cryptographic and conventional markets, leaving ordinary traders counting costs. Sometimes manipulation is obvious – unleasy tokens are high before they are equally quick – but it is often subtle and more hard to detect.

It is more disturbing that these programs are no longer the domain of dishonest whales or amateur groups. Signs are increasingly indicating highly organized, well -financed networks coordinating activities in centralized stock exchanges, derivative platforms and Onchain ecosystems. As the actors grow in sophistication, their threat to market integrity expands exponently.

A story as venerable as time

Market manipulation is as venerable as the markets themselves. In old Greece, a philosopher called Thales of Miletus used his knowledge about weather patterns to predict a bumper of the olive harvest, quietly renting all olive presses in the region at a low pace before the start of the season. Then, when collections and demand for the press appeared, he rented them at inflated prices, in women in women.

To get the latest historical example, although in the past 300 years, see the bubble of the South Sea company, in which the company’s directors abandoned shares at peak prices, leaving regular investors. Or Dutch tulip bubble century earlier.

Market manipulation existed in cryptography since the first stock exchange appeared around 2011. Pump and pride diagrams on the BTC-E stock exchange organized by a well-known trader called Fontas. Or they can remember about Bear Whale, which 30,000 BTC Sell Wall broke the market at a time when the total daily trade volume was less than $ 30 million – for all combined cryptocurrencies. Although technically not market manipulation, it showed how uncomplicated one person can move the cryptographic market.

Quickly forward, and Crypto is a class of assets worth many trillion dollars, which makes manipulation of high capitalization assets practically impossible for lonely whales. But when a group of vile traders joins forces, you can still move markets-well-organized people oriented people do it.

Manipulators make their movement

Days, when one whale could set the BTC sales wall, which took weeks, have long gone. While the crypto is now more liquid, it is also much more crushed. This is the possibilities of traders who hunt in packages to transfer markets to their favor. When working on private groups of telegrams, people coordinate activities focused on markets on which they can have the greatest impact. The trend emphasizes the growing share of main players in market manipulation programs, which is a novel level of risk for the cryptocurrency industry.

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In February, the analyst James Cryptogur warned against the risk of huge -scale manipulation involving ETF Bitcoin. He explained that these instruments can put pressure on the price of Bitcoin – especially when conventional financial markets are closed. Such a strategy can cause liquidation among lewed traders and cause short-lived imbalances, enabling huge players to collect BTC and ETH at reduced prices.

Since the crypto-onchain and dimensions are highly related, the effects of waving a successful manipulation attempt stretch far. If a trade couple, when asked by API interfaces, to feed other markets, is knocked out of synchronization on one centralized exchange, it can generate arbitration possibilities elsewhere, including perps markets. As a result, the attack can be initiated on one exchange, and the profits demand on another, which makes it extremely hard to catch the culprits.

The integrity of the cryptocurrency market faces increased risk. Coordinated groups have deep pockets, technical tools and access to the platform for performing and masking sophisticated operations. The disturbing part is that most exchanges remain reactive according to design, because it is practically impossible to prevent market manipulation. As a result, the attackers have a good chance of maintaining an advantage, even if the window in which the amok can be freely started, becomes smaller.

Not all manipulators break the rules

Like Thales of Miletus, he did not break the rules when he benefited from the olive season, most of what is cryptographic manipulation is not illegal. When a huge fund begins to buy a specific token by one of their public portfolios to pay attention – is it manipulation? Or when market manufacturers go beyond matching BID-AK spreads to actively support the price of the token at the request of the project? Many things move markets, but mainly things that are not illegal – at least not now.

While the Moral Code regulating influential, market producers, commercial companies and other players of earnest size can be discussed in detail, other cases require less nuance. The last time everyone checked, using thousands of exchange accounts supported by dozens of users to inflate a specific resource, there is gross manipulation. Replacement, supported by increasingly sophisticated AI powered tools, are fighting.

Days when one user would make chaos in the markets end. However, the threat did not disperses in the multi-scholar era, many exchanges-they are multiplied. As a result, the stock exchanges are now enclosed in Whack-a-Mole, trying to detect suspicious behavior initiated by hundreds or thousands of accounts at the same time.

Fortunately, exchanges do not have to do it themselves, as the successful cases of cooperation show. When Bybit was hacked at the beginning of 2025, other platforms entered to borrow ETH and lend a hand in fulfilling his withdrawal duties – a occasional but powerful sign of solidarity in the face of crisis.

In addition, well-financed, highly organized groups are still testing the system, one thing becomes clear: market manipulation can be relatively easy-but doing it without detecting is becoming more and more hard. Collective vigilance, sharing data and early detection become the most effective tools in the field of protection of the integrity of the cryptographic trade ecosystem.

Opinion: Tracy Jin, Operational Director of MEXC.

This article is used for general information purposes and should not be and should not be treated as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are themselves and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.