OKex and many more faking trading volumes / wash trading

[samovarul]

TLDR:
- many of the exchanges with high daily volumes are faking transactions,
- OKex being the main suspect with 92.9% fake volumes
- Huobi the 2nd on the list, 81.8% fake volumes
- most of the chinese exchanges are faking it hard: Lbank, Exx, RightBTC, CoinEgg, Zb, BitZ, Bibox, CoinEx, BTC-Alpha…

Original post on Medium (13k+ claps): https://medium.com/@sylvainartplayribes/chasing-fake-volume-a-crypto-plague-ea1a3c1e0b5e

Why should you care?
One may argue that “since it’s not a regulated market it’s not even illegal, why shouldn’t they do what they want?”, and one would be wrong. Precisely because the market is not regulated the responsibility behooves the market actors themselves. Spreading awareness and boycotting exchanges that endorse this practice is the least we can do.

One may argue that “well they’re not hurting anyone”, and one would be wrong. First of all, by inflating their volume, they position themselves in a way that could allow them to defraud gullible investors. More importantly, if you’re neither gullible nor a VC investor they can and they do have an impact on some cryptocurrencies valuation. Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash notably, have had as much as 75% of their volume circulating on one or the other of these exchanges. OKex alone consistently accounts for over 30% of either currency’s volume.

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[stompix]

No surprise here.
OKex (which is actually a rebranded Okchina) and Huobi.

I was saying 4 years ago they were faking their volume and nothing has changed it seems, just because now they are no longer doing 0 fee trades shouldn't be a reason to believe whatever comes from them.

Really wish there could be a way to really have a clue how much money are those exchanges trading and how much BTC are really in Chinese hands so we could once for all end this myth of China being the greatest and most important country for BTC

Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash notably, have had as much as 75% of their volume circulating on one or the other of these exchanges.
 

Again no surprise. Bitcoin Crash importance being inflated by Wu and Roger via such schemes.

[eminemcookie]

I've always found it suspicious when looking at their volumes compared to other large exchanges such as binance. What would be the reason behind faking volume from a business's perspective? and how does that make a difference to us as the users?

[hodlftw]

You left out Coinone as well they were recently left off Coinmarketcap due to being from Korea and having no fees. In fact you could anonymously send money to these exchanges from bank accounts too, that practice only got halted recently in Korea. It is crazy that nobody has done anything about this yet though, sometimes the prices were double what they were on normal exchanges. How are these exchanges able to operate, they clearly are not being straight up.

[zxl912157]

I've always found it suspicious when looking at their volumes compared to other large exchanges such as binance. What would be the reason behind faking volume from a business's perspective? and how does that make a difference to us as the users?

large trading volume will attract some people to make a purchase there. Sometimes they make a fake wall to increase the volume.
Always be careful with the exchanger, I make sure the safest place is your wallet, and you have full access to your own wallet.

[peterthegreat]

Most of the Chinese exchanges have been doing this from the start. Having zero fees for trading will attract manipulators who are going to fake volume to attract people towards their exchanges. As the more the volume the higher the exchanges get listed.

[samovarul]

I think the most important question / idea is - how can we get rid of them or make them play fair.
Don’t think we have any solution right now...

PS: the author of the article suggested to remove them from cmc and other reliable sources of information.

[ylnar123]

I've always found it suspicious when looking at their volumes compared to other large exchanges such as binance. What would be the reason behind faking volume from a business's perspective? and how does that make a difference to us as the users?

large trading volume will attract some people to make a purchase there. Sometimes they make a fake wall to increase the volume.
Always be careful with the exchanger, I make sure the safest place is your wallet, and you have full access to your own wallet.

That is the best way to avoid those fake exchanges, to hold your stocks is to have a wallet and that is the most secured place for your coins. We just have to make sure that we keep our private keys away from those fake exchanges.

[zxl912157]

I've always found it suspicious when looking at their volumes compared to other large exchanges such as binance. What would be the reason behind faking volume from a business's perspective? and how does that make a difference to us as the users?

large trading volume will attract some people to make a purchase there. Sometimes they make a fake wall to increase the volume.
Always be careful with the exchanger, I make sure the safest place is your wallet, and you have full access to your own wallet.

That is the best way to avoid those fake exchanges, to hold your stocks is to have a wallet and that is the most secured place for your coins. We just have to make sure that we keep our private keys away from those fake exchanges.

it's probably one of the good attitudes in anticipation of the case of losing our assets. There are many alarming cases as happened in binends.
Hackers are some of the threats that will come haunting and we can not prevent them.

[kevoh]

Thanks for the insight OP. The article you posted really opened my eyes to the shenanigans of these Asian exchanges! Based on the information provided, can one give the exchanges with low trade volume a free pass as they seem to be the ones not manipulating their trade volumes?

[DaveF]

The question that is not answered is it is "fake" as in they are not really there as in they are making up numbers.
OR is it "fake" as in a pair of bots trading the same coins between themselves for free (if they are doing it the fees are never really charged)

The other question is if exchange "X" spends $5000 on advertising (sig campaign, twitter campaign, etc) and the other spends $5k in lost trade fees looking to make themselves look bigger is it bad. (I think it is) but it is a form of advertising.

-Dave

[stompix]

I've always found it suspicious when looking at their volumes compared to other large exchanges such as binance. What would be the reason behind faking volume from a business's perspective? and how does that make a difference to us as the users?

The reasons is pretty simple, attract real customers.
Where are you going to trade on an exchange where there is trade every 1 hour or on one with 100 per minute?

The difference starts when the exchange is stating to also manipulation the price.
When he multiplies the volume by 10 a single major dump would trigger panic on the entire environment and of course the price will go down as the ones running it have planned. Happened before, and unfortunately it is still happening.
Back in 2013 everyone was looking at Huobi and OkChina and ignoring the western exchanges and although in reality the real volume was not there 99% of the traders were following it like sheep.

I think the most important question / idea is - how can we get rid of them or make them play fair.
Don’t think we have any solution right now...

PS: the author of the article suggested to remove them from cmc and other reliable sources of information.

Well, you can't really do it unless you want to go against the main principles of a free market.
Censorship and Bitcoin.....it doesn't sound too well.

The question that is not answered is it is "fake" as in they are not really there as in they are making up numbers.
OR is it "fake" as in a pair of bots trading the same coins between themselves for free (if they are doing it the fees are never really charged)

It's both.
They fake the numbers by creating trades with coins that were never there and of course this is done by bots trading between themselves.
The most simple method they have used is creating a trade where x sells 10 coins for example into a wall made of 100 coins but by miracle the one that gets the coins is the bot himself, not the ones putting the wall for real.

More complicated they insert a small delay for the organic trades, and before executing the trade of +1.5,  the bot plays around selling 2 buying 3 selling 4, but again surprisingly your trade comes at the same price you have expected and the 9 coins traded before you had no impact on the real price .

These are simple ways of doing it that have been exposed in the past and can be easily tracked, but I'm pretty sure they have an armada of tricks for this kind of stuff

[barota]

Yes I saw the large size that appears in coinmarketcap . okex is not popular like bitfinex and binance or bittrex but In the trading of btc / ustd  pairs , Is in third place .. And also in volume  trading coins is in the top ranks ; I personally have account in okex . But the last it seems very slow and I can't enter my account Even after doing forgot password , This is a fake website for sure

[magneto]

TLDR:
- many of the exchanges with high daily volumes are faking transactions,
- OKex being the main suspect with 92.9% fake volumes
- Huobi the 2nd on the list, 81.8% fake volumes
- most of the chinese exchanges are faking it hard: Lbank, Exx, RightBTC, CoinEgg, Zb, BitZ, Bibox, CoinEx, BTC-Alpha…

Original post on Medium (13k+ claps): https://medium.com/@sylvainartplayribes/chasing-fake-volume-a-crypto-plague-ea1a3c1e0b5e

Why should you care?
One may argue that “since it’s not a regulated market it’s not even illegal, why shouldn’t they do what they want?”, and one would be wrong. Precisely because the market is not regulated the responsibility behooves the market actors themselves. Spreading awareness and boycotting exchanges that endorse this practice is the least we can do.

One may argue that “well they’re not hurting anyone”, and one would be wrong. First of all, by inflating their volume, they position themselves in a way that could allow them to defraud gullible investors. More importantly, if you’re neither gullible nor a VC investor they can and they do have an impact on some cryptocurrencies valuation. Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash notably, have had as much as 75% of their volume circulating on one or the other of these exchanges. OKex alone consistently accounts for over 30% of either currency’s volume.

I remember reading the same thing about Huobi a few years back with its fake volumes.

It obviously makes it exponentially more attractive for someone to trade at an exchange which has huge amount of volume which makes them seem more trustworthy and used by whales, than an exchange that does not have these kind of volumes. That I think is the primary reason why they do choose to manipulate their volumes, apart from also manipulating prices of coins in more complicated means.

Definitely a reasonable doubt to have, and it has been around for quite a long time already. But has anyone conducted the same kind of research on western exchanges? Or is it just assumed that only asian exchanges do this and western exchanges are generally 'clean' of this crime?

[Yaunfitda]

Well I have been suspecting OKex 'faking" trading volumes when I opened up a account on them about 3 months ago. And this thread was somewhat validated my concerns. Nice OP.

But ever since I suspected something fishy going on, I immediately moved out. This Chinese exchanges really doesn't learn anything from last year's PBoC investigations on them and it seems they are still practicing it.

@magneto, have suggested, might be better to look at the Western counterpart if see if its only prevalent on our Asian friends only or such practice is being done in the West as well.

[Cyptocity]

A bit of wash trading and artificial volume inflation is to be expected in a thoroughly unregulated market. But,  I did not expect the magnitude of the artificial inflation being practice by Okex.

[gentlemand]

A bit of wash trading and artificial volume inflation is to be expected in a thoroughly unregulated market. But,  I did not expect the magnitude of the artificial inflation being practice by Okex.

Okex started off as an old school Chinese zero fee casino, all of whom were blatantly running volume bots. I remember seeing multiple exchanges having their bot going down and volume instantly reducing to near zero.

You can't really believe anything that comes out of China. Lying is an inbuilt part of doing business there.