A team of computer scientists and financial specialists at University College London has developed a tool to track the coordination efforts of pump-and-dump crypto coin scheme manipulators.

They have published a paper on the arXiv preprint server describing their tool called Perseus, its purpose and how it works.

A team of computer scientists and financial specialists at University College London has developed a tool to track the coordination efforts of pump-and-dump crypto coin scheme manipulators. As the researchers, who are affiliated with UCL's Centre for Computational Statistics and Spatial Economics, explain in a paper published on the arXiv preprint server, they have created a system called Perseus to scan messages on the messaging app Telegram, which is often used to coordinate buying and selling activity for crypto coins.

The crypto markets are still in their infancy and are largely unregulated, which means there are few rules regarding how they can and cannot be used. It also means investing in them is still a risky business. But with the promise of quick and easy riches, many have flocked to the markets in recent years, especially after the price of bitcoin rose to record highs in 2021.

However, like any market, the crypto markets are susceptible to manipulation, and in recent years there have been reports of individuals and groups engaging in pump-and-dump schemes to scam investors. In such schemes, manipulators hype up a coin to get people to buy and then sell their own coins when they believe the buying has reached a saturation point, walking away with a substantial profit while leaving those who bought later to hold the bag.

Pumps and dumps are usually coordinated on Telegram, where chats are used to communicate between potential buyers and sellers. To learn more about what is happening in the crypto markets, the research team built a system capable of reading messages sent between buyers and sellers on Telegram and analyzed them. They found that in addition to masterminds, there are also what the team describes as accomplices—the people who spread the messages posted by the masterminds, thereby allowing hype to build.

The masterminds create "pump groups" on Telegram, which are used to coordinate buying activity for a specific coin. They also post messages in "dump groups" to announce when they have sold their coins and that it's time for the accomplices to start selling. In doing so, they use a unique vocabulary and writing style that helps the research team distinguish them from other users.

The research team also developed a method for tracking the movement of masterminds and accomplices between different groups over time. This allows them to identify the masterminds who are coordinating multiple pump-and-dump schemes and the accomplices who are assisting them.

With Perseus, the research team detected 438 masterminds, who are together responsible for about $3.2 trillion in artificial crypto coin trading, and are collectively raking in approximately $250 million a year.

In reading some of the messages sent between users on Telegram, the researchers noted that the ease with which the masterminds were able to carry out their schemes should be of concern to those attempting to make money off crypto coin investing. They also suggest that at some point, some form of regulation is going to be needed to keep the system running, because eventually, those being scammed will catch on and the whole system will collapse.

Honglin Fu et al, Perseus: Tracing the Masterminds Behind Cryptocurrency Pump-and-Dump Schemes, arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2503.01686