Bitcoin Forum

Found an interesting article in which one guy did some datamining on some popular exchanges and their volumes:

https://medium.com/@sylvainartplayribes/chasing-fake-volume-a-crypto-plague-ea1a3c1e0b5e

Apparently a few of these giants are falsifying their volumes. Maybe because a higher market cap would make people think it's a more trustworthy exchange? I don't know if it's really worth going through all of that effort.

Would this have a major effect on the prices? I know we used to see huge differences in prices in the past, but now you won't see much more than a few percent here and there between exchanges.

This is disturbing, it makes the case for regulated exchanges...

It doesn't affect the market cap or price directly, but higher volumes can have a few effects:

All these new exchanges are looking to attract new customers, so they try to fake their volume to appear higher in lists of top exchanges.

Altcoins too will try to pump up their daily volume to try to appear to be a good and stable coin.

Scammers trying to make a coin appear to be good or bad can generate a steady stream of fake buy/sell to themselves to try to push the price in the direction they want.

The moral of this story is: don't trust the volume!

Old news and everybody that bothered researching the exchanges for 5 minutes before trading there knows it..
Already discussed a thousand times.....

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3173184.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3173106.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4505046.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1747868.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1438396.0

interesting, but many of that volume is caused by bots... you just have no time to react, and your PC has no way how to display that on time ))) but yeah there are exchange that are really abusing with fake volume, my personal best is bitforex )))

Each exchange has there specific whale traders who are bound to fill in the volumes as per their interest and the trends they want to show. Also bot trading is a practice.

you forgot to add if an exchange only does say 200btc volume a day thats usually only 1btc in fee's. no VC is going to buy shares in the the ownership of an exchange that only makes 1btc a day. so some exchanges fake volumes, not to make a coin look good. but to grab some VC money

its also not just exchanges. its wallet custodians faking the 'new walet' per day stats to make it seem that its a good VC prospect for advertising income of a nice increasing customer views site

Yeah and the fake growth gives the exchange more chances for expanding out and building its brand in other sides of the industry as well and market themselves on every corner of the web. Next thing you know they could be doing ICOs and making their own coin. Then they give people commission discounts if they use their coin... like Binance.

It's not an immediately negative effect on prices, but it's a long term draw out. Kind of like buybacks on the stock market, they're just inflating their own value, but this way their doing it with hot air instead of real money.

The key is never to get drawn to the price of the coins. We need to see the demand in order to determine if it is real or a scam. These sort of incidents are sad indeed to witness. The investors need to be on edge to be safe.

These exchanges are built on a unregulated space with a lot of loopholes in them. So, we cannot really do anything about it. It is an unfair practice and very frustrating for the community but if you follow web articles closely, you'll see that these accusations are mainly against OKEx, Bitfinex and Kraken. However, GDAX and Binance are still reliable for the users as they were more accurate

As far I understand it does not influence the market cap on price straightly. I think higher volume have a number of like all pull towards to new customer. Scammer always try to make a coin appear to be good.

It’s very irritating for those who faced this problem. But if anyone be careful about that they should avoid this.

Partially disappointing! We should always be aware of such kind of exchanges. We should observe market behavior that will help us decide the right.  In crypto world, we should always be dependant on ourselves rather than what others say. Cautiousness is the best key to be successful here.

Whale-like activities are readily possible to manipulate potential investors, push prices of the coins they trade bullish and equally do so to have a large volume appearance. Bots are quite known to repeat activities of a single transaction making it look as real timetransactions, however a careful analysis of the situation shows that this indeed may be a bad turn for crypto and thus give the naysayers what is a long hook to catch the bitcoin and give it a bad name.  On the all I think this is only on a few desperate sites.

I don't think there's much we can do about these exchanges since none of them are regulated. However, you can still try well know exchange like Binance, majority of the community already doing transactions there and they don't have any accusation of infating their volumes on them.

Not only that, the higher the volume, the higher the listing fee they will charge for listing any new token or coin in the exchange.

Fake volume, gets more people to sign up to trade with the exchange bot. But fake volume is also getting new coins to sign up and pay a heavy signup fee, hoping the exchange will add more volume to their coin.

The article focuses on OKex exchange. I have never used it, have you? It's trying to fight for first place in volume with Binance and with the high volume that they have it's really easy to hide some fake trades. Chinese exchanges were doing that in the past and this was one of the reason why they were banned and had to move somewhere else like Hong Kong.

The scam now is everywhere in the crypto world you must not be surprised if you see somthings like this...i think the crypto world need really people who know this world really and They can punish these traitors

Maybe GDAX -- I think they mostly play by the book. I've also seen some analysis of Bitfinex trading metrics that suggest they are mostly legitimate too.

But Binance's volume is likely manipulated. I follow lots of traders on Twitter and many people suspect fake volume because of the lack of order book depth. Same accusations you see towards OKEx. And remember, CZ was the mastermind of Okcoin and Okcoin futures trading engines, which were notorious for faking volume. You think he wouldn't work that magic at Binance, too? :)

I think all exchanges do that, especially those formed by Chinese. They are good cheaters as always. Just look at the top 20 exchanges (especially those in altcoins) how many are from them and how many we never heard the names before. It is trivial to create a bot to do auto tradings.

Of course that this is done to benefit the exchange. From now since Centralized Exchanges are popular you must trust any exchange provider that they give true statistics about their exchange. Since many people are looking at volumes before they decide which exchange they are going to use it makes perfect sense to try to give false data to increase the likelihood of new users joining and staying on the exchange.

yes I sincerely agree with you, Chinese are something else, I've visited and traded on most of these exchanges, but one funny thing of it all is that, I don't see any reasonable trading going on in these exchanges the 24hr value is always high.

you are perfectly right because i have witness such scenario

You know it is quite unfortunate that these things are happening. I see it to be as a result of no regulatory body in the crypto market. It has become like you each exchange site has its own way of fixing volumes. Binance is the one i like using and recommend for others too.

We all know that crypto market is highly manipulated and it’s too volatile. We even saw price manipulation in coinbase before but they later had it under control and now performing well. Most of the exchanges are unregulated so it’s for them to show false information sometimes to drive prices higher. The best exchanges are Binance, Coinbase, Huobi are some great exchanges now.

Bitcoin you observe find out it relies heavily on its trading volume. We even found manipulative prices in the previous coinbase but then they took control of it and now it works well. Most trading floors are unchecked, so that they display false information sometimes boosting prices higher.

I don’t think it can affect the market cap or price but the new customer will be misguided and by faking their volume they will try to be higher in the list of top exchanges.

This is absolutely absurd. I would suggest to not to trust these fake volumes. All the exchanges like this actually aims to gather people attention towards them by faking volumes.

This really shocking news. Actually many coins are doing fraud in this market. They want to make money by deceiving people. Such thing can affect their price but investors need to be careful when investing. Do not get attracted by the price and volume only.

I agree to the full 100%. Many investors read and create their impression on the basis of feedback from other investors and on daily trading volumes on the crypto exchange.

This causes trust. But how to check the real volumes?

It's just a way for them to attract more people to exchange in their exchange. Exchangers are really making a lot of money in every trade happening in their site. I don't think it would affect much on the price since there may be volume but if no one is buying or selling then nothing. That's what I think at least.

systems like this can be very easy to use, to boost their exchange, for example, they can play their own money regularly to get the desired volume, in my opinion that is a strategy.

Many exchanges are faking volume as doing this they can be benefited in many ways. They can obtain venture capital interest and get more users to their site using fake volume in their exchange.

I have read a news about this one or two months ago on how the U.S. Government had conducted a probe or investigation to this exchanges about giving their customers/users misleading information in order to manipulate the market in their liking which I have not seen any update about the results of the investigation. This does show that market spoofing really is happening especially in the less regulated market. Before their were fake bids and fake orders now the exchanges have the ability to give fake volume to mislead the public, this kinds of things shouldn't be looked on the other way as this is some next level fraud.

Thanks for letting me know about this fake volume in exchange. I am new to crypto and did not know actually this type of dirty tactics are applied here. All cryptos should be aware of these scams and fakes.

Many teams and devs are falsifying the volume of their coins to attract buyers and investors.
It is very easy to scam investors by showing them a wrong volume or to make the buy volume very high specially on small exchanges.

This is very important thing for newbie but also this is old issue i think.Every exchange is not showing fake volume i'm talking about Binance,Poloniex,Bittrex and Hitbtc are pretty good exchange and their position is top.I have not seen any fake volume yet.Because those are highly trustworthy.

As I'm already tired of these manipulations in the market, I think that not long left to manipulate the market, after regulating the market, will no longer be so brazenly played by the market

"Very helpful post. I always thought some of the volume
numbers looked strange, but didn't know they could be faked!
"

All exchangers which I ever used showed much higher prices for crypto than official course on the marketcup. I think it's done just to attract investors and traders and there is no any big mystery behind this.

Sometimes it could be the work of some devs of certain tokens. I've seen it before. They try to get their tokens rank top 5 by volume so that traders with huge amount can trade them because there's liquidity.

"I still hope in the future there will come something
like changelly only better and faster so everyone can
trade directly from their wallet.
"

Yes, I also noticed that some exchanges add volumes. But I thought it was the admin tokens pay them for it  ???...

This is really an emerging issue in cryptocurrency market, It really has to be tackled, and I think setting up a regulatory agency is one way of doing that. Another disturbing issue is bots manipulating prices, all these have to be regulated.

"I used a zero fee exchange before and they usually have a higher
withdrawal limit. It can also be an interesting way to get more users and
more trades happening. If I look at somewhere like bitstamp which has a
fee and the ones that don't it is clear to see why volume increases
Thank you for sharing.
"

This is incredible it shows the lengths that exchanges will go to in order to attract new clients and investors. IT doesn't make sense to do this it will get discovered at some point. Standards need to be in place for exchanges and soon they will have reporting requirements in order to maintain their integrity.  ???

A lot of exchanges are guilty of this falsehood. Sadly, some reputable exchanges are also not exonerated. Wash trading should be discouraged, it is deceptive

We are talking  fake here, then this article have two intention as well its either to tell the truth or to confused us by spreading fake assumptions...  Everyone should do their background check if they want the real thing.

Hitbtc volumes are obviously fake and it doesn’t need any complicated statistical analysis. Pick any random usdt market in a small volume token and it volume is huge compared to other exchanges.

What's the source of your assertion? Let's not just conclude because we have some issues or reservations abut a particular exchange.
BTW, The OP made a good point. This act is a very dangerous one as those giants could easily rip many people off their money in the event that they decide to close down. Yes there are regulators like the SEC but they usually find their way around them.

While market don't have enough regulation, exchanges can manipulate with volume. Everybody wants to make money, so do companies and exchange platforms.

Well this is unevitable at the moment... Until we got any "authority" that will approve every single transaction in every market, we have to trust on Exchange's volumes.
But I agree with you, there are a lot of platforms that are making huge fake volumes and this is really disturbing.

Yes, I agree with you on that the volume information on exchanges is something to tackle because its decisiveness is bad to the community in general and may even play a role in the market price of some coins.

Well, falsification of trading volume in crypto currency exchange site is not something new because it have been happening a longtime and even coin market capital was once also accused of increasement of coins information which I also confirmed it. However, I believe evey thing is already sort out now and this is the reason why the cryptocurrency capital is down to $252B

I think all exchanges have automatic trading system. It creates an unrealistic look. You see the volume of transactions is large but not real. These are just virtual indicators to fool

I think this is a very bad practice. It can easily manipulate beginners so i think this thing should be stopped. Otherwise it will create more problem in the market.

This is not surprising - these exchanges are totally unregulated and a perfect playground for scammers and cheaters. There have been warnings for more than a year that manipulation which is illegal in normal investment markets is rampantly out of control in the crypto markets.

Sometimes these things are created by the bots. Anyway these things creates negativity in the crypto world. I think that these things should be monitored.

Why they need to manipulate the volumes? This is really disturbing thing. Lots of scams out there and often newbies fall into their traps.

this incident took place about 5 months ago. No need to worry about it. New ICO always try to exaggerate their original volume to attract new customers. Market cap is about to stable right now.

   It's obscure do they attract new customers or current lose their trust. I'm not
worrying, fake businesses, messing with numbers are not new in economy.
   I believe exchanges that falsifying their volumes will lose customers. New customers will choose exchanges in which they can trust.
   It's not good for business to do anything fake. Good voice travels fast, bad even
faster, it's impossible to hide everything, bad things come to light eventually.
   I believe we will see similar incidents in the future, when you choose exchange
think twice and look what others have to say about them.

Fraud is now everywhere in the crypto world You don't have to be surprised if you see something like this, and I don't think there is much we can do about this exchange because nothing is regulated. However, you can still try well to find out exchanges such as Binance, the majority of people have done transactions there and they have no accusation to contribute their volume.

in my opinion there is no fake volume in the exchange, trading activities are always active every day. volatility and crypto graphs always record its development.

but, if that is true, then it is market manipulation. do positive action and go away from such exchange.

I have experienced such thing online before now. If its true, it means that such exchanges that are caught doing this should be scrutinized so as not to deceive investors.

well, sometimes this is a game from an irresponsible exchanger. I once got things like this, and of course that made me lose. so, when you try a new exchanger, you have to find information first, especially if it's an exchanger that appears suddenly.

Compare the volume of the exchanges here: https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/volume/24-hour/

Be careful in choosing exchanges because some of them are scams like bitpaction, and I don't think there is much we can do about this exchange because nothing is set. However, you can still try well to find out exchanges such as Binance, the majority of people have done transactions there and they have no accusation to contribute their volume.

You forget that crypto is an unregulated market - that means that there is NO-ONE to scrutinize this and exchanges are free to deceive as much as they want

I am surprised still use BOT to maintain daily volume of some coin all in the name to maintain the position on the CMC. There is a project I know of that refused listing on one of these exchanges just because of the fake volume of a thing.

i dont find any direct effect on price on the coin. Fake volume will just create uncertainty by the investors to going into that exchange. Hopefully, exchanges team may find ways on how to combat this kind of misinformation.

Yes, many exchanges have only a few percent real trading volume, and most offer false trading volume, which is helpful for them to collect fees for new projects to enter the exchange, which is already an open secret of the industry.

At times it's hard to indicate if the volume is fake or not. They do this for marketing and statistic purposes only so even if it's a big exchange like Binance you should be ok.

Legit exchanges only show non-counterfeit volumes such as binance or bittrex exchanges that are really on time the price of each coin price.

Yeah you are right there are some exchange that we don't need to trust because not all exchange are real, some of them scam us so we need to be careful for looking an exchange, try to trade with those exchange that many people are using.

Now days lot of exchanges are available to trade or buy crypto currency and more new exchanges will be created in future because crypto currency is spreading all over the worlds, more investors are coming to invest crypto, whenever you select an exchange check there security features, 2fa email activation mobile messages etc... if more secure then your fund also more secured. Binance,Bittrex,Poloniex,Okcoin etc... are main exchanges At first you should stay away from the worst exchanges like Yobit, Etherdelta, HitBTC first then you can trade on Binance, Bittrex, Bitfinex,...if you want but I think it depend on cryptocurrency you're going to trade cause not all cryptocurrency listed on every exchanges. For me, I'm using Binance to trade, it's quite good with a trading mobile app but trading fee is a little bit high.

Decentralized exchanges are going to become more and more important, and it will be much more easier to filter out fake volumes in a decentralized setting

That's just their mask to attract more people to use their exchange services. Exchangers are a place to turn digital money with fiat money and there are so many benefits they generate. I don't think that will have much effect on prices because what affects the market is market demand.

Yes that's the reason why exchanges fake their trade volume as if the trade volume will be more then more and more people will join the exchange because it will provide liquidity when the people will sell their coins as the market crashes if some large order is executed and there isn't enough liquidity.

if this is really so, then this is an occasion to ponder. it's very bad and to lie to users is to show that you do not respect them

Of course, they will do that. Crypto world has become very much filled with these suspicious activities which affects the trust of all investors.

An experienced investors might be able to spot such manipulations done by big entities but new investors will fall for this and suffer huge loss. Best option for them is to invest in coins like bitcoin where least manipulation is possible.

The guy Sylvain Rives when try to datamine the cryptoassets, he found out many fake volumes in the market. According to him, Okex is a ghost town and the magnitude of fraud was unexpected. He also said that Huobi has also fake volumes in the market.

If the volume is fake, it might not affect the price, I also see some crypto markets, having high volume and low volume, but still not affecting prices.

actually very bad if this happens often the trader is harmed by the fake volume to attract traders to put their money into the exchange.

That's going to be another huge disaster for us if it was proven that those popular exchanges really did it. If the volume is really that highly cheated then it would be a big deal but if it is just a 2-5 btc then I think we can still correct their mistakes.

There are so many fake volume in the exchanger so we need to be more carefull on choosing an exchanger to avoid lossing, because some exchanger manipulate its volume to make buyers buy their coin in a high price. We really need to make a good decision on choosing exchangers for good.

I concur that all the fake volume is an issue for authenticity, and I surmise that to a limited extent is what is starting the U.S. national government value control examinations.

Then again, without the fake volume, crypto may generally speaking give the presence of being dead and uninteresting to potential new purchasers, which doesn't help anybody holding crypto sacks at the present time.

Yes that's the reason we all say decentralized exchange is the future of trading cryptocurrency because they are so many manipulation by the centralized exchange.

How to verify the fake volume? Where can I check for reputable exchange?

but a careful analysis of the situation shows that this may indeed be a bad turn for crypto and thus gives opponents what is a long hook to catch bitcoin and give a bad name. Above all, I think this is only at some desperate sites.

what will happen if this manipulation continues? Will it have an impact on reducing the level of confidence in the cryptocurrency so that many parties will leave it?

It was a long time ago, I think that this was before and you just did not see them before.

GDAX and Binance are still reliable for the best users and the price of 1 BTC is very expensive for now and the price of 1 ETH has so many people to invest in it and it is very good.

Its so important to watch out for scams. They are everywhere, and you could loose alot so do your research

Yes. Very simply: Yes. And this is why the price continues to become lower and lower and lower

Many fake volumes in exchange if we pay more attention to it but maybe it won't affect if the volume is an altcoin that has no price.

Yes, I've heard many times in the past, but it seems to me that in war all methods are good and if it helps to increase the cost of bitcoin, then why not

I think it's an old practice that will persist as you all know there are so many exchanges right now and more are coming, and they are vying for traders and investors attention the more traders see volume and a lot of activities the more they get attracted to this exchanges one exchange is Yobit.

This is very sad news circulating around. The fake volume in exchanges is a new height of deception that could very well bring down the cryptocurrency confidence vote.

I hope this be address soon should proven to be true. It corrupts the whole system of transparency and security. Exchanges allowing this to happen or perpetrating the same should be denounced by the whole community in bid to fight against such unacceptable activity.

I believe, as a community, together we can make such fake volume in exchanges go away by staying away from those exchanges and altcoins.

Okex is a ghost town and fraud is unexpected. It would be a great disaster for us to prove that these popular exchanges really did it. I agree that all fake volume is a matter of authenticity and I surmise that to a limited degree is what is starting the national value-added control exam.

Each transaction affects the cost of each altcoins. And that's a sign of manipulation, I think. Notice that each altcoin has a high volume of mutation, there will be a downward or significant rise.

if you are aware of this incident you should be able to avoid the exchange place because it will definitely make you lose because the price will be manipulated by the place of exchange, so you should be careful when choosing an exchange place.

What worries me is that more and more exchanges are doing this bad thing. Will it later have an impact on cryptocurrency development  ???

Don't be surprised. Trading on the stock exchange and therefore compared with the game in the casino, because the big players have more influence on the market.