The bots came out of the closet like crickets yesterday on my server. I've been selling stuff on the market for a longer period of time and it was easy for me to spot this abnormal behavior pattern, especially considering the server I'm on is one of the lowest populated there is and suddenly a rather modest market gets flooded with items at the same time. The bots probably awakened because the game has gotten much more popular lately. As OP says if the bots are allowed to reign the market board will be just another NPC, except the money goes to illegal gold selling against government rules across the world for tax evasion and money laundering. Wouldn't be surprised if SE got into legal issues over that if that's how it ends up.