Matt Levine, Columnist

Crypto Bots Manipulate Proudly

Also Trump taxes, Trump trading, farcical meetings, blockchain and not-blockchain.

October 3, 2018 at 3:20 PM UTC

Matt Levine is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, he was a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; a clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit; and an editor of Dealbreaker.

Two scams at once.
Photograph: Bloomberg

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Crypto bots.

Is spoofing illegal? Well, sure, yes. There is a law against spoofing in U.S. commodity markets. In U.S. equities markets, where there is no explicit law against spoofing, it is still punished as a variety of fraud. Submitting orders to buy a stock, without intending to buy that stock, in order to push up the price so you can sell it: It sounds dishonest, and there’s no particular problem with calling it fraud.