seem to recall, several years ago, an announcement by some exchange that they were implementing "shadow" book orders, that are invisible to most ordinary clients. Perhaps they just started showing shadow-book trades on the ordinary ticker, to boost their public volume numbers...
That seems to be what's happening. But why would they want a lot of off book transactions? Don't they make money based on a percentage of the order cost? Why would they not want the price to rise as much as possible?
OKCoin and Huobi do not charge fees for trading, only for deposit and/or withdrawal, and interest on leveraged trading. As I recall, the shadow book was meant to cater for clients who wanted to trade on the exchange, but did not want their large orders to affect the price against them. (I may have misunderstood, and I don't know whether that makes sense.)
It's hard to see responses between all these ChartBuddys.
Thanks, I think they would be better for all if we could actually see the effects of the trades that are happening.
Right, so we are supposed to belive that while BFX volume has continued at an a consistent mostly anaemic pace for the last 2 months, OKC and Huobi have a bunch of 50k BTC orders that they suddenly decided to announce in their volume figures ...OK ....
.... perfectly reasonable explanation.
Oh wait ...no announcement from an exchange that is being accused of faking numbers that they have a valid reason for suddenly higher numbers. OK ... that makes perfect sense
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck ... most likely explanation is 'it's definitely not a duck'
Exchange volume is anaemic (excluding these wash trades) ... has been for months, and continues to be ...
Masterluc's 'Silent Phase' ...
Unfortunately this does not attract more 'hot' money, so numbers are being fudged ... Occam's Razor
Although much of the volume on OKCoin and Houbi is trading from the left hand to the right, which clearly masks the underlying anemic trends, they control the public's mind-share in terms of overall price as a result of their gross volume figures. I think that whatever those large orders are: shadow book opened up or otherwise, are actually the seeds of a back-up plan being planted for the eventual halving. Let me explain.
Below a certain price level X, profitability of large scale mining operations begins to approach the break-even point - prices do not stay here very long short-term. Long term, the goal is (and has been) to keep the average well above price level X. When we half the rewards, we automatically half profits. Outside of a black swan event, prices need to be at least 2X in 13 some odd months for the whole game to continue being profitable for the miner. The Long-Con is keeping the music playing long enough for more retail traders to come in so that institutions finally have a profitable demographic to exploit.
Edit: Some people will skim this and think, oh man bitcoin will double in price in 13 months, I am less broke! You sir, are wrong, try again. Price level X is dynamic and depends on various factors, from mining technology, to electricity prices, to even global macro conditions. Price level X could shrink by a factor of 4 even while the 2X "halving price multiplier" remains constant.