The U.S. Department of Justice fines MyTrade founder, a crypto market maker, $10,000 for market manipulation

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that Liu Zhou, the founder and principal operator of the cryptocurrency financial services company MyTrade, was recently fined $10,000 in federal court in Boston for participating in a cryptocurrency market manipulation scheme.

Prosecutors stated that MyTrade provided so-called "Volume Support" services to cryptocurrency projects through its "MyTrade MM" platform, using bots to execute false trades (wash trading) across multiple cryptocurrency exchanges, artificially creating trading volume and market activity to mislead investors. According to the plea agreement, MyTrade MM has ceased providing "Volume Support" services and permanently shut down the related wash trading bots, while adding a statement on its website acknowledging that "Volume Support constitutes wash trading, which is illegal under U.S. law." The U.S. Department of Justice indicated that the case was jointly pursued by the U.S. Attorney's Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Boston Division.