How would it be fraud?
It's perfectly legal if it's not specifically regulated as a financial market. Tons of firms do things quite like this - over-the-counter derivatives are rife with various market manipulations.
It's perfectly legal if it's not specifically regulated as a financial market. Tons of firms do things quite like this - over-the-counter derivatives are rife with various market manipulations.
To me, the whole situation is an incredible demonstration of why "free markets solve everything correctly" is only (even potentially) true as N_participants -> infinity - and even more so a direct lesson in how thoroughly a "market" can fail when it's too small...