To the moon: defining and detecting cryptocurrency pump-and-dumps

Pump-and-dump schemes are fraudulent price manipulations through the spread of misinformation and have been around in economic settings since at least the 1700s. With new technologies around cryptocurrency trading, the problem has intensified to a shorter time scale and broader scope. The scientific literature on cryptocurrency pump-and-dump schemes is scarce, and government regulation has not yet caught up, leaving cryptocurrencies particularly vulnerable to this type of market manipulation. This paper examines existing information on pump-and-dump schemes from classical economic literature, synthesises this with cryptocurrencies, and proposes criteria that can be used to define a cryptocurrency pump-and-dump. These pump-and-dump patterns exhibit anomalous behaviour; thus, techniques from anomaly detection research are utilised to locate points of anomalous trading activity in order to flag potential pump-and-dump activity. The findings suggest that there are some signals in the trading data that might help detect pump-and-dump schemes, and we demonstrate these in our detection system by examining several real-world cases. Moreover, we found that fraudulent activity clusters on specific cryptocurrency exchanges and coins. The approach, data, and findings of this paper might form a basis for further research into this emerging fraud problem and could ultimately inform crime prevention.