Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase fined $ 6.5 million for manipulating information on trading volumes

The cryptocurrency market has long been a tidbit not only for ordinary users, but also for all sorts of attackers.

Moreover, sometimes even a major player in this market can be an attacker. According to sources, the well-known cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase was fined $ 6.5 million for providing false information.

More specifically, according to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the exchange manipulated trading information by inflating rates to attract more customers. In particular, from 2015 to 2018, two programs were launched on Coinbase Pro (Hedger and Replicator), which periodically exchanged cryptocurrency between their wallets, thus artificially increasing the trading volume. It’s worth noting that the programs were generally designed to work independently of each other, but sometimes they matched orders against each other in certain trading pairs, resulting in trades between Coinbase-owned accounts.

At the same time, the commission suggested that the situation was more negligence than deliberate action. On the other hand, in the period from August to September 2016, one of the exchange employees deliberately used this mechanism to increase the trading volumes of Bitcoin and Litecoin. Apparently, in the end, the exchange was fined precisely for this.

…