Episode 99 of the Public Key podcast is here and with Bitcoin prices soaring we thought it was a perfect time to repurpose one of our most downloaded episodes and talk with international terrorism consultant and founder and CEO of Cloudburst Technologies, Evan Kohlmann. He dives deep into pump and dump schemes, the dark web world of organized market manipulation groups and provides us with intel on how they operate.
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Public Key Episode 99: Crypto market manipulation being coordinated by dark web group
With Bitcoin reaching all-time highs we thought it would be best for us to revisit one of our most downloaded episodes on Public Key discussing Crypto Market Manipulation, with former Flashpoint founder, Evan Kohlmann and Ian Andrews (CMO, Chainalysis). Evan is now the Founder and CEO of Cloudburst Technologies, a company tasked with scraping the dark web to identify potential pump and dump schemes and the associated illicit actors.
In the episode recorded in February 2023, Evan explains the nuances of these targeted market manipulation attacks, who the orchestrators are, and the countries being targeted. He explains how his team’s technology can gather KYC information and shed some light on the extent these schemes have on the total illicit activity in the industry.
Evan even records an update to this episode highlighting the sudden rise or crypto prices, what are the biggest market manipulation concerns for 2024 and new data that his team is seeing that the general public should be aware of.
Quote of the episode
“There is $120 billion of volume per year that’s being sucked out by online crypto pumps and dumps…That is six times the money that is lost in ransomware.” – Evan Kohlmann (Founder, CEO, Cloudburst Technologies)
Minute-by-minute episode breakdown
- (2:27) – Understanding market manipulation in the crypto world and what Cloudburst Technologies is doing about it
- (4:35) – How to identify the illicit actors on dark web forums attempting to manipulate the markets
- (12:30) – How Evan got the name “The Terrorist Search Engine” and how he helped build up leading dark web intelligence firm, Flashpoint
- (15:21) – How millions of people in dark web forums and Telegram are organizing themselves to pump certain tokens 50% up to 500%
- (20:49) – Applying Cloudburst technology to traditional commodity markets and large market cap tokens
- (28:00) – Are illicit actors targeting decentralized exchanges and protocols or just centralized exchanges
- (30:05) – How Cloudburst is able to identify KYC on illicit actors across the dark web using OSINT
Related resources
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Speakers on today’s episode
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