Topic: Forbes says Half of Bitcoin trading volume is fake (Read 326 times)

This really wouldn’t surprise me nor do I have a hard time believing it. Now I think the 51% “finding” is a bit unfounded, and don’t believe that to be a true accurate number of how much of the trading volume is fake, but I could see a portion of that, maybe a quarter, for coins like bitcoin. Not for most all shitcoins, I could see that number being accurate. They are mostly nonsense pseudo scams anyhow.

What we don't know, and cannot know is how much volume is done off exchanges. Did DaveF just give hugeblack $20000 in cash for 1BTC while we were at lunch together with stompix mediating the trade?

If this analysis is realistic, then the ratio is not frightening. There is a percentage of fake volume trading in organized stock markets despite many restrictions that govern its work, let alone an unregulated decentralized market. The effort falls on individuals and governments to force currencies to show real trading volumes or at least limit lying.

Fair point but you forget to consider 2 different things.

Most of the volume comes from exchange platforms because it's the reality, that's where people trade. Sure, the study didn't consider the volume done IRL for example. We could also mention the DEXs and other places. But I believe (maybe wrongly) that it represents a minimal percentage
By the way, Institutional bitcoin trading volumes account for 99% of transactions over $100,000 and Only 13 crypto exchanges provide ‘trusted’ trading volume (yes I know it's a bit old but the trend hasn't changed a lot since)

Of course, the study isn't perfect but it still gives an overview

Now, who cares? Well, not really a good way to attract people to the crypto market I would say. It's a bit like lying in my opinion

I think everyone in forum knows this is definitely, 100 per cent true. Although I also think it does not matter at all. Year is 2022 and not only cryptomarkets, every market has fake volume. Markets became best place to generate money very quickly. There are many options, like bots as example, became very popular and cheap over last 10 years. I don't think we can solve this problem. It is the result of business itself.

In that case, we could then talk about trust in companies (CEX), and not in Bitcoin, which cannot be held responsible because someone manipulates trading data. If that's an excuse for them not to believe, then it's a really stupid excuse. Apart from that, I don't really care what governments and some rich investors think, because for most of them Bitcoin will always be a problem.

I can't judge how accurate this report is, but such public perceptions is quite damaging to Bitcoin's long-term adoption. Governments and investors with more conservative approach are not trusting Bitcoin, so it's hard for Bitcoin to become a truly mainstream asset, instead of being controversial.

This really wouldn’t surprise me nor do I have a hard time believing it. Now I think the 51% “finding” is a bit unfounded, and don’t believe that to be a true accurate number of how much of the trading volume is fake, but I could see a portion of that, maybe a quarter, for coins like bitcoin. Not for most all shitcoins, I could see that number being accurate. They are mostly nonsense pseudo scams anyhow.

More than half of all reported trading volume is likely to be fake or non-economic. Forbes estimates the global daily bitcoin volume for the industry was $128 billion on June 14. That is 51% less than the $262 billion one would get by taking the sum of self-reported volume from multiple sources.

Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin, continues to be a dominant player in the crypto trading economy, especially when it comes to trades against bitcoin. Its current market capitalization is $68 billion, despite questions about its reserves.

In terms of how much bitcoin activity takes place at these firms, 21 crypto exchanges generate $1 billion or more in daily trading activity, while the next 33 exchanges had volume between $200 million and $999 million across all contract types, spot, futures and perpetuals. Perpetual futures, or perpetual swaps as they are also known, are futures contracts that don’t require investors to roll over their positions. Binance is the clear leader, with a 27% market share, followed by FTX. Looking only at spot bitcoin, the top position is shared by Binance, FTX, and OKX. Chicago-based CME Group is the market leader in bitcoin futures trading.

The biggest problem areas regarding fake volume are firms that tout big volume but operate with little or no regulatory oversight that would make their figures more credible, notably Binance, MEXC Global and Bybit. Altogether, the lesser regulated exchanges in our study account for approximately $89 billion of the true volume (they claim $217 billion).

The creation of new trading assets and products such as stablecoins and perpetual futures adds complications for national authorities seeking to regulate crypto markets. Major U.S. exchanges hardly utilize these instruments or contracts in any of their trading. However, offshore exchanges make significant use of them as ways to synthetically create U.S. dollar liquidity on their platforms (they cannot get U.S. bank accounts).

In the Western world and particularly in the U.S., it is tempting to think of bitcoin only trading against either the U.S. dollar or the euro and British pound. But some of the largest trading pair activity occurs against fiat currencies like the Japanese yen and Korean won and against major stablecoins like Binance U.S. dollar and the USD coin.

 573 million people visit crypto exchange websites on a monthly basis