Market manipulation in crypto
This library records 113 enforcement actions involving the crypto asset class, spanning 16 of its 60 manipulation techniques and 4 regulators (SEC, CFTC, OSC, FCA), filed between 2014-06-03 and 2026-08-11. These are enforcement records, not a random sample of conduct: they reflect what regulators chose to investigate, charge and publish, not the full population of crypto manipulation that actually occurred.
Crypto is one of this site's six technique families in name, but in the case data it is broader than that: a record is tagged with the crypto asset class whenever the conduct touches a digital asset, whether the technique itself is crypto-native — a rug pull, a wash trade on a decentralised exchange — or an older technique such as insider trading or a Ponzi scheme applied to a token instead of a security. The breakdown below is of that wider set.
Records by technique
- Ponzi schemes 31 records
- Unregistered distributions 23 records
- Paid stock promotion 16 records
- Price manipulation 7 records
- Insider trading 5 records
- Wash trading 5 records
- Pump and dump 3 records
- Exchange wash trading 2 records
- Rigged binary options execution 2 records
- Boiler rooms 1 record
- Newsletter scalping 1 record
- Oracle manipulation 1 record
- Paid crypto market making 1 record
- Rug pulls 1 record
- Sham tender offers 1 record
- Spoofing 1 record
The technique mix
Records by year
Recent crypto enforcement actions
What's distinctive here
Within this library, crypto-tagged records cut across 16 of the 60 techniques, a wide spread for one asset class, because token markets give regulators occasion to charge both the crypto-native schemes native to that family (rug pulls, oracle manipulation, wash trading on thin venues) and conventional fraud (insider trading, Ponzi structures, unregistered offerings) applied to a new instrument. SEC brings the largest share of the crypto-tagged records this library holds (67 of 113). None of this demonstrates that crypto markets are manipulated more or less often than other markets — only that this is what the matters regulators have chosen to bring and publish look like. The record is also incomplete by construction: more than half of this library's total case count is conduct this site classifies as related but distinct from manipulation itself , and crypto is no exception to that caveat.