Coinbit Exchange Operators Suspected of Market Manipulation Sent to Prosecution

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Jeong Dong-hoon] The operators of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbit, suspected of price manipulation, have been sent to the prosecution with a recommendation for indictment.

According to the police on the 6th, the Metropolitan Investigation Unit of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency recently sent three people, including Chairman Choi, the actual owner of Coinbit, to the prosecution with a recommendation for indictment on charges of falsifying electronic records and fraud.

They are suspected of inflating trading volume and manipulating prices by buying and selling coins between internal accounts of the exchange using specific accounts from August last year to May this year. Through this method, the coin trading prices soared by tens to hundreds of times, and the operators are suspected of gaining unfair profits in the process.

Coinbit operates Exchange 1, which trades major coins such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, and Exchange 2, which blocks deposit and withdrawal accounts to prevent transactions with external exchanges. It is known that they earned price differences worth hundreds of billions of won through this method on both exchanges.

They are also suspected of manipulating coin trading volume by falsely recording deposit details as if some coins were actually traded using ghost accounts with money existing only on the books.

The police conducted a search and seizure at Coinbit’s headquarters in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, last August and secured materials containing evidence of price manipulation.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.