Chinese Exchange Houbi Reaches 10MILLION BTC Weekly Volume - Is It Real?

[bitcoinmarkets]

web version: http://www.bitcoinfuturesguide.com/bitcoin-blog/houbi-reaches-10million-btc-weekly-volume-is-it-real


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This seems really strange: Houbi has reached all-time high volume. Weekly volume has reached 10 Million Bitcoins. Remember: Chinese exchanges have a 0% fee model http://www.bitcoinfuturesguide.com/bitcoin-blog/arthur-hayes-of-bitmex-chinese-exchanges-are-operating-as-shadow-banks , which enables interesting trading behavior.

To compare, this is what OKCoin weekly volume looks like:

And this is what BTCC (BTCChina) looks like, note the reverse trend of their Chinese competitors OKCoin/Houbi:

And now compare with the USD exchanges, here's Bitfinex's weekly chart with volume:

Looks a bit more normal.

Now let's look at BitStamp, who has been suspected of volume faking also http://www.bitcoinfuturesguide.com/bitcoin-blog/is-there-fake-trading-volume-on-bitstamp:

So it seems like Houbi's 10 million coin weekly volume is a bit suspicious in the context of how the rest of the exchanges are doing. But maybe they just have some special customers and are doing really well? Who knows.

[RustyNoman]

It would be real if the Huobi charges 0.01% trading fee. Unfortunately, Huobi charge 0% trading fee. So the volume is not comparable to other fee charging exchanges.

[anonymousx]

Bots make the most of the volumes of any exchange, ping pong etc, special programmed software uses API to buy/sell and I guess same bitcoins circulating counts as volume and it builds up, I bet that the Chinese exchange have a popular bot in China add to that the size of Chinese users, it can happen and it doesn't have to be fake, and I doubt an exchange will fake their volume because it can be easily detected using api calls, you can log sells and buys and compare to the volume.

[FerrariF50]

What do they earn then? 0% fees?

[bryant.coleman]

I don't believe any of this. The Chinese exchanges inflate the numbers like anything. Not only Houbi, but also the other Chinese exchanges such as BTC China, OK Coin, and Gatecoin are doing the same. I don't trust any of these exchanges. If what happened to Mt Gox in 2014 repeats once more, then we will be in a lot of trouble.

[richardsNY]

Huobi's volume is simply too high to be real. They don't do any effort to hide their fake volume. It's simply ridiculous. Their 10 million BTC weekly volume is basically a milestone without being a milestone. It's fake.

[bryant.coleman]

Huobi's volume is simply too high to be real. They don't do any effort to hide their fake volume. It's simply ridiculous. Their 10 million BTC weekly volume is basically a milestone without being a milestone. It's fake.

Reminds me of the December 2013 situation, when the Mt Gox staff rigged the order books, and took Bitcoin to a new peak ($1,200+). At one point of time, the spread between the exchange rates in Mt Gox and BTC-e was as much as $250 per coin. And as we all know, it didn't end well. I am afraid of something similar happening with Huobi.

[albert73]

Huobi's volume is simply too high to be real. They don't do any effort to hide their fake volume. It's simply ridiculous. Their 10 million BTC weekly volume is basically a milestone without being a milestone. It's fake.

All the Chinese exchanges compete with each other to fake the most volume so the winner can say it's the highest volume exchange. There's no way to find out the real volume on any of them, but it's minuscule compared to the faked volume. There's less than 15 million bitcoins in existence, and it's impossible that Houbi's got 70% of them.

[Denker]

Of course this volume is fake.Everybody knows this.With 0 fees you can play ping pong with transactions as much as you want.
All the chinese exchanges are faking the volume.This is a race between them of who is the best faker!

[hunnaryb]

Of course this volume is fake.Everybody knows this.With 0 fees you can play ping pong with transactions as much as you want.
All the chinese exchanges are faking the volume.This is a race between them of who is the best faker!

You know what's more concerning, is that they're playing around with customer funds.

[dloghwak]

Starting 5 threads a day just to promote your website may be considered as spam, and 5 links each post to the mentioned site is even more obvious.
On topic: It's probably 'real' volume created by bots trading the same coins back and forth between each other.

[BillyBobZorton]

I don't know if they are rigging numbers or not, but if they are they better get ready to have some really angry customers, we have already seen how pissed off people got back in the day because of the Mtgox incident.

[n691309]

I think that about the volume that can be real, because the bitcoin price isn't increasing itself, but we should congratz the chinese because they are doing a good job by affecting the bitcoin visibility (by being bitcoin alive).

[nickhiggins123]

I think that about the volume that can be real, because the bitcoin price isn't increasing itself, but we should congratz the chinese because they are doing a good job by affecting the bitcoin visibility (by being bitcoin alive).

Any publicity is good publicity.

[n691309]

I think that about the volume that can be real, because the bitcoin price isn't increasing itself, but we should congratz the chinese because they are doing a good job by affecting the bitcoin visibility (by being bitcoin alive).

Any publicity is good publicity.

I would not say any publicity is good publicity because we have seen how bad people (hackers, criminals) are using bitcoin and in many countries bitcoin is getting banned because of this. But Houbi seems the biggest exchange in the market for now.

[NorrisK]

In their defense, they have been promoting their service quite a lot lately. Ofcourse it is very likely that there is a lot of manipulation going on to reach those volume on a less established exchange, but the main wesetern exchanges are reaching those amounts daily, so it could be real.

[1Referee]

I think we should take this news not with a pinch of salt, but more with a truckload of salt.

Regarding OKCoin & Huobi, I consider their real volume to be "just" 10% of what they want you to believe. Huobi's 7 day volume is BTC10.78 million, 10% of that makes their volume BTC1.078 million. OKCoin's 7 day volume is BTC7.24 million, 10% of that makes their volume BTC724 thousand.

There is too much fake trading happening on their exchanges, and not to mention the huge loads of phantom orders. It's a total mess. I have been monitoring the live orderbook of Huobi for quite some time, and out of nowhere there are more than frequently orders of BTC500-1000 popping up and vanishing after just a second. It's pure insanity.

[lexuz]

Wow that is too many, i don't think that's volume is reasonable... looks manipulation has been played now

[Gleb Gamow]

Starting 5 threads a day just to promote your website may be considered as spam, and 5 links each post to the mentioned site is even more obvious.
On topic: It's probably 'real' volume created by bots trading the same coins back and forth between each other.

"Leave Alex Harries alone!"