MyTrade founder Liu Zhou sentenced for market manipulation in landmark crypto wash trading case

Liu Zhou, the 39-year-old founder of crypto market-making firm MyTrade, was sentenced in US District Court in Boston for conspiracy to commit market manipulation and wire fraud. His punishment: a $10,000 fine and a court order to shut down the wash trading bots that powered his entire business model. No prison time. For a guy who ran bots that faked trading volume across roughly 60 digital assets, the sentence lands somewhere between a slap on the wrist and a firm handshake goodbye. What MyTrade actually did MyTrade’s bots would execute simultaneous buy and sell orders on the same token, often within the same second, creating the illusion of real market activity where none existed. MyTrade, registered in the British Virgin Islands, launched in 2021 and didn’t exactly hide what it was doing. The company openly advertised tools for wash trading and pump-and-dump schemes. In English: they sold a service that made garbage tokens look like they had genuine investor interest, luring real traders into markets built on fabricated demand. Zhou operated between China and Canada while running these operations, managing what prosecutors identified as one of three primary market makers involved...