Topic: [2018-03-12] Study Finds $3B Worth of Faked Cryptocurrency Volumes and Wash Trad (Read 106 times)

On March 10 a cryptocurrency trader and researcher published a report on how he believes $3 billion worth of cryptocurrency trade volumes, primarily from a couple of exchanges, are concocted. The author of the study, Sylvain Ribes, alleges that the exchange Okcoin has been fabricating up to 93 percent of its trade volumes.

Massive Discrepancies Between Exchanges

Sylvain Ribes has published a study that reveals some interesting information about trade volumes stemming from exchanges like Okcoin (Okex) and Huobi, which may be falsifying their trade volumes. Ribes calculated his data from order books across all major exchanges to “measure how badly market selling $50k USD worth of each cryptocurrency would crash the price.”

Further Ribes refers to a term called “slippage,” which he defines as “the percentage change between the observed mid-spread price and the lowest price I had to consent to sell the asset.” Throughout Ribes’ research of various currency volumes coming from exchanges like GDAX, Bitfinex, Kraken, Binance and more he found vast inconsistencies between trading platforms.  

“I found ridiculously massive discrepancies between exchanges. Not the kind that can be easily hand-waved away (“oh well, their users must behave differently”), but the kind that can only be explained by some figures being overstated as much as 95%,” explains Ribes’ study.



Orange, dark blue and light blue dots are GDAX, Bitfinex, and Kraken. Red dots are Okex. The exchange “Okex is a ghost town” says Ribes. 

Read more: https://news.bitcoin.com/study-finds-3b-worth-of-faked-cryptocurrency-volumes-and-wash-trades/