Bitcoin Forum

The Blockchain Transparency Institute has released its December Exchange Volumes Report, delving deeper than ever before into suspected wash trading. The conclusions paint a rather damning picture. Only 2 of CoinMarketCap’s top 25 BTC pairs aren’t massively inflating actual volume.
https://bitcoinist.com/binance-bitfinex-not-fake-volume/

I'm actually a little surprised there are two exchanges that don't fake their volume.  I naturally assumed they all did.  Still, those two are probably doing something else illicit.  Bitfinex still have that Tether shadow looming over them.

i'm surprised tbh. but i'm also not sure how good their methodology is for catching volume pumping. CZ built okcoin's volumizer back when they ruled the market and i always thought binance's volume vs books was suspicious (at least in their earlier days).


i'm pretty worried about bitfinex actually. it's not just the CFTC anymore that's looking at them. the DOJ is involved now (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-20/bitcoin-rigging-criminal-probe-is-said-to-focus-on-tie-to-tether), and they're always involved when major criminal enforcement actions come through the pipeline. i'm getting flashbacks to the btc-e seizure.....

Bitfinex is a horrible exchange and has been for quite a while now. I wouldn't trust anything coming from that exchange, especially with how they are notoriously spoofing their orderbooks with large fake buy walls (that they withdraw as soon as they notice someone is about to dump into them) to make it seem like there is a lot going on, while in reality it's quite disappointingly boring.

It's not a list consisting of which exchange are the best of the best, but a list consisting of exchanges of who's the least worst of the worst.

Binance is the only decent exchange in the list. Unregulated, but still decent.

#Metoo

I'm more surprised by the binance numbers, remember they've fled Japan while denying they have any problems or any looming investigations. Bitfinex might be shady but despite everything else, it's still one of the oldest around and is still operating with the US keeping an eye on it, so they might be ok from this point of view. Tether is a different story.


As for the rest....who would ever believe those numbers?
It's going to be pretty funny for their owners when the fiscal inspectors knock at the door wondering how an exchange that does 100 million in daily trades has a revenue of 1k a day. ;D



Probably it's not that clear and they don't have enough proofs ..so the house won't crumble very soon.
Remember how swiftly they've arrested the guy from btc-e?
Just recently I've read of another arrest, the guy who was running an romanian exchange, they didn't even wait for extradition papers, he was in a plane before he realized what is happening.

So probably nothing will happen at least this year  ;D
And if it does, god help us cause it's really not the time.

Who funds the Blockchain Transparency Institute? Answer that and the motivation for this report would be clearer.

In any case, I reckon our favorite, classic exchanges, Bittrex and Poloniex, have never faked their volume. Also, with Poloniex being owned by Circle and being based in America, it would be a grave mistake.

you can't separate bitfinex from tether. that's why they are both the subjects of the same criminal probe by the DOJ and CFTC. bitfinex is the only place that redeems tether (because they're both owned by the same people). i think the "tether printing" allegations mostly center around strings of $50m and $100m tether deposits that were immediately sent to bitfinex before huge market buys.


the feds waited to unseal the indictment and seize the website until they were able to have alexander vinnik arrested. but they were investigating btc-e for years before that, and they were analyzing btc-e's servers under warrant for 7 months. i think the case is similar here. they've been investigating bitfinex for at least a year now.

I think there was another list that included huobi as well. Other echanges that appear out of nowhere are definitely fake volume traders. It is easy to get bots to do the hard work and get into the lucrative top ten position in cmc

I think the Tether drama has put some spotlight on Bitfinex's shady trading behavior and they are trying to fly under the radar for a while. Time will tell if they had learned some lessons from that or if they are going to repeat their mistakes.

I can still remember when most Asian exchanges were closed down by their governments, when they investigated them and found massive manipulation of trading volumes. I hope we will not see a repeat of this, once the regulators gets wind of this study.  :P

Perhaps it has something to do with the methodology of BTI that's why they didn't caught specially Bitfinex of wash trading or faking their trade volumes. Because I'm also quite surprised to find out Bitfinex of all the the trading exchanges not into some illicit trades. But there's no surprised on HitBTC and Huobi, LOL, the report says 25% volumes are fake which we have long suspected for a very long time.

The fact that this so called report states that Bifinex, one of the shadiest exchanges out there, isn't washing shows just how wrong & unreliable it is.

Wondering what the connection is between Bitfinex & this "Blockchain Transparency Institute".......

bitfinex doesnt need to wash trade when they print free tether and buy right? in this case report might be right.

ps this news has 2 of same topic replying here as 1 sure to be dumped/merged.

Fair point.  It does seem a little suspicious that there are two exchanges that get a glowing report and the rest are all terrible.  Maybe we should take these findings with a pinch of salt until it's clear that this transparency institute really are as transparent as they claim.

We'll never get the truth presented to us, but the fact that one of the shadiest exchanges (as you also referred to it) in the industry is coming out as one of the best performers stinks.

I'm glad that I don't use that exchange so there isn't much for me to lose here. I however don't hope that we'll see them pull off another gox type of exit scam, because that would hurt this ecosystem more than anything else.

It's good to see that there is more competition in the stablecoin market, because the more market share USDC and other coins gain over USDT the lower the potential damage is Bitfinex can inflict if they go full nuts.

We're expected to believe Bitfinex and the largest Tether exchange don't fake volume, but everyone else does?

In before it turns out the Blockchain Transparency Institute is owned by iFinex Inc. :D All its supporters are no-names so it's impossible to tell who really funds them.

Also, why is there a drink menu on their site (https://www.blockchaintransparency.org/drinks/)? Who are these people?

I never believe this type of reports as they are not the genuine sources and most of the time you can see that they are also manipulated by the so called exchanges. Always do your own research and trade in good exchanges.

LULZ at this - it certainly is a crappy site. It's only a few months old too:


Domain Name: BLOCKCHAINTRANSPARENCY.ORG
Registry Domain ID: D402200000007276130-LROR
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.godaddy.com
Registrar URL: http://www.whois.godaddy.com
Updated Date: 2018-10-19T03:47:28Z
Creation Date: 2018-08-20T01:15:35Z
Registry Expiry Date: 2019-08-20T01:15:35Z
Registrar Registration Expiration Date:
Registrar: GoDaddy.com, LLC
Registrar IANA ID: 146
Registrar Abuse Contact Email:
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +1.4806242505
Reseller:
Domain Status: clientDeleteProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientDeleteProhibited
Domain Status: clientRenewProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientRenewProhibited
Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited
Domain Status: clientUpdateProhibited https://icann.org/epp#clientUpdateProhibited
Registrant Organization: Domains By Proxy, LLC
Registrant State/Province: Arizona
Registrant Country: US
Name Server: NS24.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Name Server: NS23.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
DNSSEC: unsigned
URL of the ICANN Whois Inaccuracy Complaint Form https://www.icann.org/wicf/)



A transparency group that's hiding behind a cheapo godaddy privacy shield.......

Also, it needed to drag the leading exchange, Binance, in the article for it to look authentic hehe.

Another sign that the Blockchain Transparency Institute is a scam is it accepts donations in XRP hehehe. The most untransparent cryptotoken in the cryptospace. Its transactions cannot be traced back to its genesis.

This because they had a huge connections already with the crypto in the market. THe community that has been using the this exchanges are believing already and that is good for the cryptocurrency. The demand should be look more on how to improve it and this exchanges has shown that demand is great without faking any market cap volume.

Out of curiosity i did search their donation addresses. lol

http://i65.tinypic.com/2wn0bj8.png


I would only believe for Binance to have this title but for Bitfinex its a big Nah!

And the title of the page is Partners, their devs must be drunk while creating this simple HTML page.

As a transparency group having no team introduced, a newly made website, mentioning their algorithm without even publicize it, a site shielded with whoisguard and having partnered with cocktails, wine and beers lmao -> http://archive.is/F8q9r

I wonder how media acknowledge this group as a transparency group and publishing their so-called reports.

This because these two exchanges are already established with good community support that is why many people came to ask a certain project to be listed in any of these two.exchanges because a crypto that will gone listed will going to have a good market price increase after it will show visibility in the exchanges.

Here the information is presented in a more detailed way and includes some figures:
https://www.blockchaintransparency.org/december2018

I consider Bloomberg to be a reliable source of information. Frankly speaking, I wasn`t much surprised that Binance and Bitfinex occurred on that list. These two have always appeared to me as trustworthy exchanges. Maybe I`m preconceived concerning it because during my experience of using the both I`ve encountered any major issues, just some minor nuisances.
To sum up: good to know that at least two exchanges - Bitfinex and Binance - are transparent (according to the latest news, Liquid has joined them).
These platforms are not involved into wash trading unlike all the other exchanges from top 25.
It`s up to you to decide which one is worth dealing with.
Share your experience.

This  crypto world is very scary, if bitfinex has real volume and is in position 8 with volume of $480 529 075. so binance is in the first position, that is to say that bifinex should be in the second position and other exchanges would be below binance and bitfinex. how the hell does OkEx have volume of $ 1 105 999 095; Huobi has a volume of $ 935 526 010 (it has a small different volume with OKEx) but notice that from OKEx to Binance there is a great difference of volume

Where is coinbase in that report? One of the leading exchanges in the world wasn't included.
Also, the exchange that is listed as the worst one, with the highest fake volume, doesn't seem to work. https://www.coinbene.com/ is not loading. What is that exchange? I've never heard of them and yet they have a higher reported volume than coinbase, binance, kraken, and many other popular exchanges. Pretty big for a site that doesn't work.

Coinbase and other USD exchanges aren't listed because of how much higher the top exchanges are on the list due to their wash trading and other tricks. The top exchanges are all USDT exchanges, coincidence?

If you discard the USDT exchanges, which you definitely should since they in most cases aren't fiat entry points, Coinbase Pro is the absolute leader followed by Bitstamp and Kraken.

Bitfinex unfortunately doesn't make a difference between USD trading and USDT, because that would clearly show how little USD volume they generate and lose their top spot on sites as Coinmarketcap.

What?  So, the first connections are now appearing Mr 4-posts-in-a-year-riskyron.  First of all Bloomberg is a fiat based rag that's well known for BTC bashing & splurting BS. Secondly, the fact that you seem to swear by Tether:


...in one of your 4 posts per year, but you also happen to swear by Bitfinex which only proves that you are a Bitfinex/Tether shill account & more than likely behind this BS "transparency group" that's hiding behind a privacy guard.

Edit: I also see on your profile that your email address has been changed recently - bought/hacked account for shilling?

The Chinese exchanges were always known to be the exchanges that do wash trading, maybe not to increase volume, but because the exchange itself might be laundering billions similar to what BTCe used to do.

closer to the New Year other exchanges, except Binance and Bitfinex want to pretend that they are cool.
some exchanges really let to do some fictitious transaction, so that' s how this fake volume appear.
Of course all the big exchanges look normal, before you dont know what s going on inside

I agree with you. For big companies like coinbase it's important to show big fabricated volume in the beginning and in the end of the year to proof it's status. Thing is it doesn't really mater when it's fake. Talking about bitfinex great it publish real data showing some difficulties every platform goes through

That's true. We don't know exactly what they are showing for us, it's only a PR campaign. For such big exchanges (https://cryptodetail.com/category/crypto-exchanges) reputation means everything, so is they have any chance to be represented in a better way, they will be.