In late 2013, the U.S. dollar rose from an unprecedented $150 to over $1,000 against bitcoin in two months, so researchers looked at two suspicious trading periods that occurred between February and November 2013 and found that approximately 600,000 bitcoins (about $188 million) were purchased by suspicious agents during that period. acquired, and that the dollar rose by an average of $20 against bitcoin during the second period of suspicious trading.

“Bitcoin prices rise by an average of 4% per day when suspicious transactions occur, compared to periods when no suspicious transactions occur, when bitcoin prices experience a small decline.” The researchers also calculated that 55% of the dates studied saw an increase in bitcoin prices, and that percentage rose to a whopping 79% when suspicious transactions were present.

From this, the researchers believe that the wild rise in the price of bitcoin may be due to price manipulation by suspicious transactions.

In the paper, the researchers analyzed 18 million transactions leaked that year and found that the price manipulation was mainly carried out by Markus and Willy, two “bots” that traded without actually owning real bitcoins.

researchers believe that the market for bitcoin trading was limited in depth at the time, and that Mt.

research found that Markus purchased a total of 335,898 bitcoins between February 14 and September 27, 2013, worth about $76 million at the time. Willy, on the other hand, used 49 different accounts, each of which would go offline after buying $2.5 million worth of bitcoin, followed by the next account coming online and repeating the same operation.

During the time period when Markus was most active in trading, the median daily trading volume on Mt. Gox had a median daily volume of only 17,400 trades during periods when the “bots” were not active, and the average gain from trading bitcoin was a slight loss.

And when Willy was active, the average daily bitcoin price on all four exchanges rose by 4.8%-5.0%, and when it was inactive, all four exchanges saw their prices fall slightly as well.

Another important finding in the article is that during the trading sessions when the “bots” are active, the increase in trading volume is much greater than their own contribution, and the reason for this is that such an increase signals the market to encourage real investors to enter the market.

It’s worth noting that the Mt. Gox exchange was the largest virtual currency exchange in the world at the time, accounting for 80% of global bitcoin trading. And right after that late ’13 spike, in February 2014, Mt. Gox made a public statement that 750,000 bitcoins deposited on the exchange by customers and 100,000 bitcoins it kept were lost due to a hack, which came right after a round of crazy growth in late 2013.

Thereafter, in August 2015, Tokyo police arrested Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpler on suspicion of irregular manipulation of account data and embezzlement of public funds. Japanese media reported at the time that the Japanese prosecution’s indictment showed that Karpuler had embezzled, among other things, by remitting a total of about 321 million yen in funds to an external account from an account in the name of the company that managed client funds.