Cryptocurrency exchange orchestrates shameless ‘pump and dump’ scheme

In a blatantly fraudulent turn of events, a small-time cryptocurrency exchange has decided the best way to beat the bear market is to just throw morality to the wind, and ‘pump and dump’ random coins.

Wednesday evening, Russia-based cryptocurrency exchange YoBit took to Twitter to announce it will be buying 1 Bitcoin (BTC) worth of a “random coin” every couple of minutes, starting this Thursday.

This is apparently meant to happen ten times.

YoBit Pump in 22 hrs: https://t.co/RIbW7OhKzM
We will buy one random coin for 1 btc every 1-2 mins 10 times (total buy amount – 10 btc).

— Yobit.Net (@YobitExchange) October 10, 2018

Presumably, they will then sell the coins shortly after, to whoever is unlucky enough to be buying the pre-determined ‘top’ price limit.

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The exchange UI has even been redesigned to include a timer counting down to zero, signaling the pumping and dumping has begun.

I want to make it clear: You should not take part in hair-brained schemes like these – whether hatched by goobers in a Telegram channel, or by goobers running a dodgy cryptocurrency exchange.

The unfortunate part is the whole thing seems to be working. Transaction volume on YoBit is rising dramatically, increasing more than 160 percent in the lead-up to this rampant bullshit.

It’s easy to make light of something like this – but we shouldn’t, especially at a time when cryptocurrency adoption is supposedly more crucial than ever.

Pump and dumps, exit scams – these are the proverbial tails I thought we were ready shed. Sadly, it appears some of us aren’t ready to move on.

I’m choosing to believe that this is mostly due to a yearning to relive the craziness of the last quarter of 2017, where seeing short-term return on investment was as easy as logging into Binance and rolling your face over the keyboard.

And besides, the more money that flows into YoBit, the more lucrative something like an exit scam would be. Just sayin’.

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