I'm sure that this is part of a big farm accounts being paid to bump projects. If in the next couple of days we see newbies bumping Mercatox, its obvious that they're being paid and should be at least red tag or worst ban them in one full sweep.
Yep. I've come to the same conclusion as you.I made a post about it here; https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.46957815 but apparently it's quite hard to do anything about it.
Mercatox is just the tip of the iceberg. There's multiple exchanges doing this. Just take a look at this thread and how obviously it is being constantly bumped.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4971628.360
The site has no traffic but almost thrice the volume of Cryptopia - It's an obvious scam trying to lure newbies in with the constant bumping...
https://www.coinhills.com/market/exchange/coinsbit/
https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/cryptopia/
https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/coinsbit.io
https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/cryptopia.co.nz
