A recent study highlights the alarming extent of market manipulation in cryptocurrency, with less than 500 individuals reportedly responsible for $250 million in profits and over $3.2 trillion in artificial trading. Researchers at University College London created a tool named Perseus to analyze Telegram chats used for coordinating pump-and-dump schemes, identifying 400 masterminds manipulating coin prices through deception. These masterminds utilize accomplices to amplify their messages, significantly increasing the chances of attracting naive investors and executing their scams successfully.
Market manipulation in the cryptocurrency world is rampant-and fewer than 500 people are responsible for as much as $250 million a year in profits and over $3.2 trillion in artificial trading.
Perseus, the tool Fu and his colleagues developed, identified more than 400 so-called masterminds that helped seed fake hype for crypto coins through millions of Telegram messages.
There is one kind of bad actor, we call a mastermind in the paper. They're the main distributor, you can think of them as, of the pump-and-dump method.
The accomplices are crucial to carrying out the scam, Fu says, because they're the ones that convince people at scale that a cryptocurrency is worth investing in.
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