For a decade, Barclays (among others) rigged the precious metals markets with bursts of sell orders to maintain the illusion that the ultimate indicator of status quo failure was not flashing red. It now appears that Bitcoin suffered the same (but buying burst) manipulation in the last year as The Willy Report notes that last year, a number of traders began noticing suspicious behavior on Mt. Gox. Basically, a random number between 10 and 20 bitcoin would be bought every 5-10 minutes, non-stop, for at least a month on end until the end of January. Each time, (1) an account was created, (2) the account spent some very exact amount of USD to market-buy coins ($2.5m was most common), (3) a new account was created very shortly after. Repeat. In total, a staggering ~$112 million was spent to buy close to 270,000 BTC – the bulk of which was bought in November. So if you were wondering how Bitcoin suddenly appreciated in value by a factor of 10 within the span of one month, well, this is why. Not Chinese investors, not the Silkroad bust – these events may have contributed, but they certainly were not the main reason. But who did it? and why?