Original article: Binance denies reports of DWF Labs market manipulation
By Zoltan Vardai
Compiled by: Odaily Planet Daily Husband
On May 9, the Wall Street Journal reported that an anonymous source claiming to be a former Binance insider said that Binance investigators discovered that DWF Labs had conducted $30 billion worth of fake transactions during 2023.
When asked about instances of market manipulation, Binance denied the reports. A Binance spokesperson told Cointelegraph: “Binance strongly denies any suggestion that its market surveillance procedures allow for market manipulation on our platform. We have a robust market surveillance framework that identifies and takes action against market abuse. Any user who violates our Terms of Use will be removed; we do not tolerate market abuse.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, DWF Labs manipulated the price of the Yield Guild Game (YGG) token, as well as at least six other cryptocurrencies last year. However, Binance said: The monitoring procedures will make this impossible.
A Binance spokesperson told Cointelegraph that Binance is actively banning traders who engage in market manipulation: “Over the past three years, we have removed nearly 355,000 users who violated our terms of use, with a total trading volume of over $2.5 trillion.”
The Binance spokesperson added that investigating potential market manipulation is a top priority for the world’s largest exchange, and this has been confirmed by an independent investigation: “A recent independent investigation of Binance’s market surveillance by Inca Digital validated the effectiveness of our methodology and found ‘little to no signs of unusual trading activity.’”
Earlier news, after high-volume on-chain activities attracted the attention of crypto investors, DWF Labs was first accused of market manipulation in September 2023. Among them, the well-known market maker Wintermute was one of the first companies to accuse DWF Labs of crypto market manipulation.
In a September interview with Token 2049, Wintermute co-founder Yoann Turpin said: “DWF Labs was not a market maker in our opinion and they were deceiving users by declaring what were essentially OTC trades as investments.”
Andrei Grachev, co-founder of DWF Labs, strongly denied the allegations.
