Hi Community,
I have been reading about Grin coin and Mimblewimble protocol for a while and I really really appreciate the project.
That said, I tried looking information about the Coin on coinmarketcap and to my surprise, HOTBIT did have the highest volume among any other exchange at the time of writing this, well above any other exchange in fact.
It did not look suspicious at first given the coin was just launched a month ago and Poloniex and Bittrexx listed it just a few days back.
But There was something I couldn't digest about the volume though, so I started looking more into it. Went on to HOTBIT to see it for myself, Here is what their Index page looked like :
In the Image one see a massive volume of ~1,725,985 GRIN (about ~55 percent of their current circulating supply) against only BTC, that is equivalent to about ~1899 BTC in volume in last 24 hours.
Here's a second Image,
Green marker: Shows a good amount of trade volume with those long bars rising from bottom in the graph BUT the sell and buy order say it otherwise.
Red Marker: The SUM of total orders in order book (BTC) in the visual area doesn't even count more ~0.2 BTC combined for both sell and buy orders. Interesting huh
GRIN volume wasn't above ~200 for sell and ~300 for buy order book.
Moreover, I monitored trade trades for about 2 hours and I couldn't find one transaction that could stand true with their data on the outside. The Graph did show at times high spikes in the Trade volume, but there was no Volume at all to back them up. They just appeared out of nowhere and order book did not even change much.
Here's another pic,
All them trade volumes were showing up magically and order book remained similar with one or two big orders above ~0.2 BTC every once a while but nothing drastic.
You all are most welcome to see if for yourself. The volume isnt at all what they claim and it suggests just one thing - You can't trust a service like this.
PS. After doing a little research I found a guy complaining about this on one of their telegram channels and they blocked him/banned his account.
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