He goes by the pseudonym @wolfofpoloniex on twitter, and is one of the trading touts that post their opinions alongside technical and fundamental analysis. However, what he is doing goes past posting mere graphs and into market manipulation.
Here is what I suspect is Wolf's system:
So not only is he making money from subscriptions to his pack (possibly over 50 BTC worth a month), but he's having these people who already paid him pump the price of his coin, he's manipulating when they should buy or sell to mimic technical analysis, he's pumping it on twitter with emerging news, and he's then telling his followers to sell after he moved out to drop the price even more.
This doesn't seem like it can possibly be legal for a US citizen, but I honestly don't know if it's black and white illegal and if so what can be done. All I can do is provide evidence.
Edit: I do not believe Wolf knew this rumor was false. Just pointing out that he was picking a coin that likely had news/rumors he could point to as justification for the rise in price which came from his army.
This is very damning to me. From wikipedia:
Market manipulation is a deliberate attempt to interfere with the free and fair operation of the market and create artificial, false or misleading appearances with respect to the price of, or market for, a product, security, commodity or currency.
He conspired with hundreds of other people in a coin listed on only a few major exchanges to create false or misleading appearances with respect to the price in order to paint a picture about the market to profit off of it.
This one I don't have direct screenshots for, and this part is a hypothesis on my part, but I had a friend in the group who gave me information, and I'll show you a timeline of events and let you decide.
On 8/29/2017, he told his group to exit MCO at 3:12pm central or 8:12pm UTC time.
At 8:00 UTC, MCO's price was .00500000 BTC (wolf actually sold before this)
At 8:10 UTC, MCO's price was .00474000 BTC
By 9:00 UTC, MCO's price was down to .00407000 BTC
I don't know if this is true for this particular coin, or other coins he has pumped. Wolf posted some screenshots of buys/sells, and he owned higher, and sold higher before telling his group to sell:
So he actually did own before he told the group, then bought more at 240k, then continued buying during the pump phase, then started selling at 550k before he told his pack to exit. And we have no idea what he sold after that.
This part is flimsy at best, and I should have excluded from the blog. But I'd rather post what is there and let people decide than to try and guess what is relevant and what isn't. I suspect that he sold most, and kept some of his MCO profits in case the VISA news panned out.
The market manipulation is obvious. Is it illegal? I'm no legal expert, but from what I saw market manipulation is unethical and gray, but not strictly illegal. Does anyone have a better idea of the legality?
What happens when he gives advice on a larger marketcap coin with more volume that isn't only on one or two exchanges? He gets rekt.
On the recent downswing for BTC, wolf tried unsuccessfully to pull what he always does with smaller coins. He said to buy BTC at $3900, said once again to buy it at $3500, and then said to exit all of the crypto markets at $3400. To justify these decisions he was posting charts of the 1 minute candles on BTC and other nonsense that no legitimate trader would try and pull. It's pretty clear he's clueless about trading and just very good at manipulating markets and making money off people willing to pay to help him manipulate.
He will continue going about his business, will probably never get in trouble, and people selling these coins outside his circle of influence without knowledge of his pumps and dumps will be paying the bill. But it's important for people to be aware of what is going on so they can avoid troublesome spots.
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