Topic: BTI research: exchanges inflate trading volumes by more than $6 billion daily (Read 95 times)

Blockchain Transparency Institute (BTI) published a study that claims to be the largest exchange of crypto-currencies inflate trading volumes or participate in sham transactions. BTI explains that the 130 best trading platforms included in the study are overstating trading volumes by more than $6 billion every day.

Every day, cryptocurrencies are exchanged for billions of dollars. For example, in the last 24 hours, deals worth about $12.9 billion have been made. Over the past year, the activities of many exchanges have been carefully studied for false reporting, and various sites have been suspected of overstating trade volumes.

Blockchain Transparency Institute explains that 70% of the largest 100 exchanges listed on sites such as Coinmarketcap, misleading wrong information about trading volumes.

BTI research: exchanges inflate trading volumes by more than $6 billion daily cryptowiki.ru

The research methodology uses the liquidity of the order book of the trading platform and data on the daily number of unique users of the exchange. The study was conducted using data from web sites traffic, such as Google Analytics and Similarweb.

"EXCHANGES THAT PROVIDE ACCURATE DATA USUALLY HAVE THE RATIO OF TRADING VOLUME TO A UNIQUE USER OF ABOUT 2% AND 5% (AVERAGE 3.5%). THE SAME IS TRUE FOR EXCHANGES, WHOSE ACTIVITY IS QUESTIONABLE, RANGES FROM 10% TO MORE THAN 655,000%," — NOTED THE RESEARCHERS. "FOR EXAMPLE, THE EXCHANGE LBANK AND ZB THAT CLAIM TO BE INCLUDED IN THE TOP TEN OF ALL EXCHANGES, ALSO CLAIM THAT ONE UNIQUE VISITOR HAS THE TRADING VOLUME OF OVER $214 000 AND $74 000 PER DAY RESPECTIVELY. THIS IS STRANGE GIVEN THAT THE FAMOUS HIGHLY LIQUID MARKETS BITFINEX, COINBASE BINANCE AND HAVE THE NUMBER BETWEEN $5 000 AND $8 500 FOR ONE VISITOR A DAY."

BTI researchers claim that there are differences in the trading volume of the Okex and Huobi exchanges, as well as the Bibox trading platform. The study details that Binance is leading in the number of unique visitors per day, and the largest trading platform in the US is Coinbase.

As for South Korea, BTI researchers claim that Bithumb exceeds the volume of Upbit. However, Upbit decided to challenge this statistic and contacted the BTI team. The researchers said that they will study in detail the number of users of Upbit mobile applications and are ready to work with any exchanges that provide reliable data. Ultimately, the study concludes that transactions of about $6 billion a day from 130 exchanges are fictitious.

"AFTER CALCULATING THE TRADING VOLUMES OF THE EXCHANGES OF THE TOP 130, WE CAME TO THE CONCLUSION THAT MORE THAN $6 BILLION IN DAILY TRADING VOLUME IS FALSE. THUS, MORE THAN 67% OF DAILY GLOBAL TRADING VOLUME – FICTITIOUS TRANSACTIONS," — SAYS THE RESEARCHERS.

Fabrication of trading volumes is a well-known practice in the crypto-currency industry. Such accusations have been made against stock exchanges since their appearance. Back in 2013 and 2014, there were many studies and articles
on the subject of the fact that exchanges provide false figures. In July of this year, Ranks Crypto Exchange published a report in which the Coinmarketcap website is accused of posting information about false trading volumes. This year, Coinmarketcap has made some adjustments to the work and changed the principle of forming the ratings of exchanges.