And now, in This-Is-What-You-Get-Betting-In-An-Unregulated-Marketplace news, crypto prices got whacked again by fears around fraud in these completely unregulated and often opaque markets.
Big, well-known coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum have too much at stake for serious manipulation from the inside, but little newcomers (43 new ICOs in 2016, 210 in 2017, and 279 so far in 2018) stand to manipulate the not-so-smart money for quick gains in a very pump-and-dump kind of way, among others. Dangerous to investors, these risks add volatility overall to a still very immature marketplace.
And here’s the result. One of those not-the-big-boys coins got raided by the very dubious South Korean gov’t, on suspicion of fraud. Thus affecting all coin prices everywhere, just when they were working on a nice steady climb the past few weeks. Oops!
The slump comes amid negative headlines in the crypto space. South Korean news agency Yonhap said prosecutors raided the country’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, Upbit, on Thursday and Friday on suspicion of fraud. Upbit is the largest market for cryptocurrency EOS, accounting for 13% of all trade according to FXStreet, and EOS dropped 16% on Friday in response.