YoBit exchange bizarrely announces ‘random coin pump’

Yobit exchange announced a bizarre ‘random coin pump’ today, leaving many users to question whether the website and Twitter had been hacked or if they were indeed promoting a ‘pump-and-dump’.

The Russian-based exchange has been operating since 2015, offering trading on over 480 cryptocurrency pairs. However, it now faces the looming possibility of losing all credibility after posting this bizarre and somewhat cryptic tweet: “YoBit Pump in 22 hrs: We will buy one random coin for 1btc every 1-2 mins 10 times (total buy amount – 10btc).”

Followers on Twitter were quick to jump the gun, claiming that the exchange must have been hacked. But the longer the tweet remained on their page, alongside a countdown timer on their official website, the more suspicious people became.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has typically come down hard on ‘pump-and-dump’ groups in legacy markets as well as within cryptocurrency, issuing a subpoena to the developers of SJTCoin.

While the cryptocurrency community continue to speculate on the motive behind YoBit’s planned ‘pump’, it certainly seems like the dark side of unregulated crypto exchanges seems to be rearing its ugly head once again. The YoBit staff have, thus far, not made furthers comment on their original tweet and countdown timer.

The timer will hit zero at 2pm (GMT) on Thursday, so it will be interesting to see what pans out. For now, it would be a much safer bet for traders to avoid holding funds on the exchange until a resolution is found.

‘Pump-and-dump’ groups typically see investors lose their funds; the organisers of the group often ‘dump’ their assets while the average investor attempts to participate in the ‘pump’, which usually sees the price move heavily to the downside.

Click here to see our guide of the top 10 cryptocurrency exchanges including the likes of Bitfinex, Gemini and BitMEX.