Dogecoin market manipulation?

This illustrates a simple idea in economics: cartels are hard to maintain because participants will look out for their own self-interest.

I'm not sure why it's on HN, but it's real.

It was originally happening in the public channel #dogecoin-market on Freenode but was then moved to the private channel #marketmakers, which seems to have spurred people to start sharing it everywhere since now it's private.

Wolong is the guy who brought the Dogecoin price to where it is now by investing a ton of money into it, and due to that and some charisma he's attracted a cult following. He's now using that cult following to have them do pump/dump ops for him (with their money).

Here's his manifesto: http://pastebin.com/RdRAULtT

It's entertaining, I'm waiting for someone to do a solid article on the story.

Bear in mind that cryptocurrencies are currently an unregulated wild west, where activities like these are both common and legal. Do not invest anything you are not prepared to lose.

edit: just for further corroboration, here's logs from a few days ago: http://pastebin.com/1NTTBCXM

You can check the charts at http://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/cryptsy/dogebtc and see how that was responsible for a drop to 212. From memory they were using about 36million dogecoins, which comes out to approximately 78btc or $65,000.

My pet theory is that wolong is just building trust at this point so he can eventually have his army of followers buy all his dogecoins at inflated prices, but who knows. No matter what happens, it's very entertaining to watch develop.

Is the main idea behind this scheme to get other participants to lower the price and since the orchestrators got their positions earlier they profit or do they simply need the volume of the masses to make their scheme profitable? If it's the latter, couldn't they just get a large enough loan and move the markets with their own funds seeing as Dogecoin is still a relatively small market?

It's fun to hear many people saying: "Jamaican bobsleigh donations raised Dogecoin prices", while it's just series of small speculative attacks on cryptocurrency happening.

I feel sorry for the people participating in this market manipulation. I made a good chunk of BTC thanks to wolong's forewarning of his upcoming pump he made days ago but left it at that.

The character started insisting 10k doge tips for him to answer questions on irc, then moved to a private channel where to get an invite you basically have to prove you at least have 10 BTC and are willing to let him ultimately execute trades on your behalf. There are lots of fools in that channel who will soon find themselves parted with their money.