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Comment by jnordwick | Hacker News Reader

All they do make a regression analysis and say that two traders traded on days the market went up. Given you can actually track every transaction you would think they would be able to point to size of the transactions, percentage of daily volume, or something more interesting. Instead they simply tell you the average amount the rate increased in days these guys traded.

Weak.

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But their conclusions are fair, they don't overreach and call for more study on the matter as any scientist should do.

As mainstream finance invests in cryptocurrency assets and as countries take steps toward legalising Bitcoin as a payment system (as Japan did in April 2017), it is important to understand how susceptible cryptocurrency markets are to manipulation. We encourage the nascent cryptocurrency industry to work with regulators and researchers to share anonymised transaction data so that more confidence can be placed in the veracity of exchange rates.

Every market participant wants to buy low and sell high. They are all manipulators in some sense. Dedicated manipulators exist, but really they are just part of the market and assist in price discovery. Deep markets generally defeat the type of manipulation that worries people. Multiple competing exchanges keep the exchanges honest.

But they didn't show manipulation. They showed two parties trading on up days.

Heard of the Look Elsewhere effect?

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/882/

Not really relevant here however.

And they call for more study to confirm or deny their finding. So far so good.

It's people that might overact in a way or another, this article is just a piece of data.

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