What You Need To Know About Crypto Market Manipulation

With Bitcoin reaching all-time highs we thought it would be best for us to revisit one of our most downloaded episodes on Public Key discussing Crypto Market Manipulation, with former Flashpoint founder, Evan Kohlmann and Ian Andrews (CMO, Chainalysis).  Evan is now the Founder and CEO of Cloudburst Technologies, a company tasked with scraping the dark web to identify potential pump and dump schemes and the associated illicit actors. 

In the episode recorded in February 2023, Evan explains the nuances of these targeted market manipulation attacks, who the orchestrators are, and the countries being targeted. He explains how his team’s technology can gather KYC information and shed some light on the extent these schemes have on the total illicit activity in the industry.

Evan even records an update to this episode highlighting the sudden rise of crypto prices, what are the biggest market manipulation concerns for 2024 and new data that his team is seeing that the general public should be aware of.

Minute-by-minute episode breakdown

• (2:27) – Understanding market manipulation in the crypto world and what Cloudburst Technologies is doing about it
• (4:35) – How to identify the illicit actors on dark web forums attempting to manipulate the markets
• (12:30) – How Evan got the name “The Terrorist Search Engine” and how he helped build up leading dark web intelligence firm, Flashpoint
• (15:21) – How millions of people in dark web forums and Telegram are organizing themselves to pump certain tokens 50% up to 500% 
• (20:49) – Applying Cloudburst technology to traditional commodity markets and large market cap tokens
• (28:00) – Are illicit actors targeting decentralized exchanges and protocols or just centralized exchanges
• (30:05) - How Cloudburst is able to identify KYC on illicit actors across the dark web using OSINT
• (33:25) - Where are illicit actors operating and the biggest market manipulation concerns for 2024

Related resources

Check out more resources provided by Chainalysis that perfectly complement this episode of the Public Key.

• Website: Cloudburst: Crypto is Risky, Invest in Intelligence 
• Report: Bankrolling Terror: Iran's Role in Fundraising and Recruiting for Hamas Post-10/7
• Report: The Chainalysis 2024 Crypto Crime Report (Download Today)
• Event: Chainalysis Links Conference NYC 2024 (Apr. 9-10, 2024) - Early Bird Pricing On Now!
• Blog: 54% of ERC-20 Tokens Listed on DEXes in 2023 Display Patterns That May Be Suggestive of Pump and Dump Schemes, but Represent just 1.3% of DEX Trading Volume
• Blog: 2023 Cryptocurrency Gains by Country
• YouTube: Chainalysis YouTube page
• Twitter: Chainalysis Twitter: Building trust in blockchain
• Tik Tok: Building trust in #blockchains among people, businesses, and governments.
• Telegram: Chainalysis on Telegram

Speakers on today’s episode

• Ian Andrews * Host * (Chief Marketing Officer, Chainalysis) 
• Evan Kohlmann (Founder and CEO, Cloudburst Technologies)

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