A recent paper on Bitcoin Price Manipulation (BTC) showed that one single actor was probably responsible for the Bitcoin price of $ 150 to $ 1000 in 2013.

The paper, co-authored by Neil Gandal, JT Hamrick, Tyler Moore, and Tali Oberman, examines the activity Suspicious trading that took place on Mt. now deceased. Gox's Cryptocurrency Exchange, and states that it was correlated with the sharp rise in the USD-BTC exchange rate at the end of 2013:

"The USD-BTC exchange rate rose an average of 4% suspicious transactions occurred, compared to a slight decline in days with no suspicious activity. "

The suspicious activity consisted mainly of two robots, Markus and Willy, who used bitcoins that they did not own. what seemed like valid jobs. These fraudulent transactions were included in the overall trading volume by Mt. Gox exchange, showing a higher than normal amount of commercial activity and thus prompting the public to start trading legitimately.

The article postulates that Willy's bot's use and his crafts were used to cover an earlier hack at Mt. Gox:

"A The theory, originally adopted in a Reddit post shortly after Mount Gox's collapse (Anonymous, 2014b), is that the hackers stole a huge number (about 650,000) of bitcoins from Mount Gox in June 2011 and that the exchange owner Mark [Karpeles] took extraordinary steps to cover the loss for several years. "

The price manipulation that took place early Bitcoin crypto market , and the possibility for this to happen now too, is due to the relatively thin market for cryptocurrencies that leaves them vulnerable to high price fluctuations.

President Jay Clayton of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) delivered a speech in November warning of the potential for price manipulation in the market for initial coin offerings (ICO ).

In August 2017, Cointelegraph reported an anonymous actor, known as Spoofy, who manipulated the Bitcoin markets by "spoofing" (bidding or offering with the intention of canceling before the Execution) large amounts of bitcoins.

Spoofy, who also engaged in washing trade, or buying and selling to himself, was a success y manipulating prices mainly on the Bitfinex exchange, which at its turn influences the whole market because of the way crypto-currencies are exchanged.