PANews reported on October 31 that according to CoinDesk, the U.S. Department of Justice said that the operator of the cryptocurrency "market maker" MyTrade has pleaded guilty. This is one of the targets of a large-scale crackdown earlier this month, which has charged multiple companies and individuals with market manipulation. According to the Department of Justice, Liu Zhou, 39, will be tried in federal court early next year for "wash trading of customers' cryptocurrencies on multiple cryptocurrency exchanges." Liu Zhou once told others that "we do self-buying and self-selling transactions-that is, buying and selling in the same second," and its trading volume robot can perform "pump and dump" operations. Liu Zhou also allegedly stated that the purpose of his company is to find "other buyers in the community, that is, those you don't know or don't care about," because in order for the tokens to make a profit, these buyers must lose money.
According to federal indictment documents released a few weeks ago , Gotbit, CLS Global and ZM Quant were also accused of wash trading various tokens to create the illusion of more legitimate trading activity than it actually was and selling some of these tokens to others at "artificially inflated prices." Meanwhile, another company, CLS Global, said it had contacted U.S. authorities to cooperate.
