Only 1.6% (!!!) of USD Bitcoin trading volume is real. 98.4% dollar volume fake!

[jjjfff]

The guy made a big "salad", trying something good, having some good ideas, but vastly incomplete. And incomplete means bad in this case.

He removed stablecoins. Great. But he should have counted all the fiat. USD is not the only fiat. There are big volumes on BRL, CNY, CRW, EUR and maybe others too.
Yes, stablecoins are a plague. Unfortunately we have to live with them. Sooner or later the fake (not backed for real) ones will go down.
The numbers look pretty bad. But making them even worse by missing out this and that won't help anybody.

To be fair he did say USD and not "all currencies". As I understood the intended comparison here is between USD and stablecoins, not overall fiat money.

USDT is named after USD after all!

[pooya87]

Perhaps some of you might have seen
What do you think about this? Seems like obviously something's wrong here? Why are stablecoins even being called dollars?

there is something wrong here, and that thing is your title. you are NOT talking about bitcoin trading volume in USD, you are talking about the number that a shitty website called coinmarketcap.com reports and that number is not fake, it is just not what you are looking for.
it is like if you looked at the date and time of this post and think it is the bitcoin price!!!
the number that website reports is the sum of a bunch of irrelevant markets which includes both bitcoin/USD pairs, bitcoin/Tether pairs, bitcoin/other stable coins, and even bitcoin/some altcoins like LTC pairs!

[jseverson]

People already addressed it, but exchanges are used more for day trading and small purchases, and stablecoins are more convenient for that purpose.

That doesn't mean cold hard cash isn't flowing into the market though, if that's the concern. OTC exchanges exist, and they apparently have a larger volume than traditional exchanges.

[Kakmakr]

The actual problem is the fake volume that needs to be generated by the people who listed these Stablecoins. You have to remember that crypto exchanges needs a minimum amount of volume from coins that are listed on their platform to make it viable and profitable for them to list these coins.

So, if a coin does not meet the minimum volume of transactions, the exchange might have to de-list it to make room for other coins which has the potential to generate more income for them. A lot of the transactions are faked to keep the stable coins listed on the exchanges. 

[NeuroticFish]

To be fair he did say USD and not "all currencies". As I understood the intended comparison here is between USD and stablecoins, not overall fiat money.

USDT is named after USD after all!

That's correct, but from what I understood the number, the way he did the research for USD only is completely irrelevant, bringing conclusions that can be misinterpreted and projecting news that look much worse than the reality.

[zgrdyg]

It is because of wash-trading.

There are some exchanges on coinmarketcap, they are saying have more volume than binance but i have never heard of them. I think coinmarketcap is helping wash-traders for not delisting them.

[aad140386]

If the stablecoins data is not provided with anything, then of course in the future problems will be and quite serious ones may arise problems. But this will not be due to the fact that dollar volumes are fake, but because companies that have pledged to provide their coins in the ratio of 1 = 1 to the dollar have not done so and are scammers. Like for example USDT. But it is also true that the real dollar is now also not secure. This is a piece of paper, which is accepted by the whole world, but not having a full supply of goods or assets.

[traderethereum]

It is because of wash-trading.

There are some exchanges on coinmarketcap, they are saying have more volume than binance but i have never heard of them. I think coinmarketcap is helping wash-traders for not delisting them.

Maybe yes, maybe no.
We don't know the truth, and even if that is the truth, as long as we can take the profit from bitcoin trading, then I think we don't have to bother with those things.
In the end, the volume fake will replace with the real volume because it doesn't give an impact to the traders because traders will know if the volume is fake or real.

[LUCKMCFLY]

Well keep in mind that the CMC volume data are not real, here they do not consider the consolidated volume, because there is not the volume of all Exchanges, ejm: of Localbitcoins, of some Koreans Exchanges, and if this is not available in account, obviously the volume is not the real, there is not yet any meter of the consolidated volume, because all the Exchanges of the world must be taken into account, that way if the consolidated volume would be taken into account.

Each Exchange handles its own Volume, and that's why it's usually seen differently, because it has not yet had that capacity to have that consolidated volume link, maybe Strong Hands if they have that data with Blockchain programmers, which, It can be achieved.

[Broly46]

With so much fake volume we are sure to have a lot of fake crypto rich too. I think top 100 crypto rich are nobody because they can't show their money in terms of hard cash, just a fake number and volume, how ironic?

[pushups44]

The reddit discussion is like this:
Only 1.6% of the USD/Bitcoin reported volume is actually traded in USD
NOBODY said anything about fake.

Just because I trade LTC vs BTC doesn't mean it's fake.
But, and this is quite funny, although I don't agree with how the conclusion was taken, I agree with the results, probably ~95% is fake activity, bots run by the exchanges themselves to attract customers with fake numbers.

Real USD volumes are less for certain reasons as mentioned below,

1. It requires a bank account and the transfers can be tracked by the regulatory bodies.
2. Most of the crypto traders prefer to remain anonymous
3. Stablecoins are easier to handle than real USD

4. A lot of shitty tokens end up being listed only on shitty exchanges that have no USD or another fiat alternative because they want to leave no tracks when they exit scam.
And so users are forced to sell their tokens for stable coins and then turn their stable coin into either BTC or ETH or fiat.

Clearly the industry needs to address fake volume by exchanges. We need an independent body to authenticate the volume of exchanges to attract mainstream investors into the space. Already some progress is being made in this respect, but we should also press websites to delist exchanges that fail to meet industry standards.

[Pursuer]

Clearly the industry needs to address fake volume by exchanges. We need an independent body to authenticate the volume of exchanges to attract mainstream investors into the space. Already some progress is being made in this respect, but we should also press websites to delist exchanges that fail to meet industry standards.

no we do not need such things. we are in a decentralized system with a semi-decentralized market and it should remain that way and if anything it should be decentralized more instead of going towards more centralization by introducing entities to start policing the market.
as for mainstream adoption, it won't happen because of these things. the adoption process is much more complicated than that.

[stompix]

With so much fake volume we are sure to have a lot of fake crypto rich too. I think top 100 crypto rich are nobody because they can't show their money in terms of hard cash, just a fake number and volume, how ironic?

I've never heard somebody being rich because of volume...wtf is that?
I can make 100 000$ in trade volume rolling 100$ back and forth at the same price, that doesn't make my volume or my 100$ fake.
The problem is when those trades are made by the bots the exchanges run.

Clearly the industry needs to address fake volume by exchanges. We need an independent body to authenticate the volume of exchanges to attract mainstream investors into the space. Already some progress is being made in this respect, but we should also press websites to delist exchanges that fail to meet industry standards.

Let me count
- independent body to supervise trade
- industry standards
- force businesses to delist businesses

You know you're heading fast and with no lights or breaks towards the current stock market situation.

[Broly46]

With so much fake volume we are sure to have a lot of fake crypto rich too. I think top 100 crypto rich are nobody because they can't show their money in terms of hard cash, just a fake number and volume, how ironic?

I've never heard somebody being rich because of volume...wtf is that?
I can make 100 000$ in trade volume rolling 100$ back and forth at the same price, that doesn't make my volume or my 100$ fake.
The problem is when those trades are made by the bots the exchanges run.

Clearly the industry needs to address fake volume by exchanges. We need an independent body to authenticate the volume of exchanges to attract mainstream investors into the space. Already some progress is being made in this respect, but we should also press websites to delist exchanges that fail to meet industry standards.

Let me count
- independent body to supervise trade
- industry standards
- force businesses to delist businesses

You know you're heading fast and with no lights or breaks towards the current stock market situation.

That's true volume didn't represent the true wealth. It would provide liquidity to the said investment, with so much ICO and IEO running everyday, volume naturally become an indicator to identify good actors from the rest of them. Most poor ICO practically has very low volume, and I'm sure they can't be considered crypto rich, however faking volume is one hell of workload to do, I would like to learn how exchange could fake the volume so effectively, it certainly not easy to trade the crypto 24/7 everyday, they must have a very good algorithm and software to get the job done.

[jak3]

Fake dollar volumes are not a recent problem, for many individuals, it is not a problem at all. It's your point of view, most of the people choose stablecoins because they want to keep their balance anonymous from where Government and banking sectors. If you want to invest in Bitcoin for long term profit then put your money inside Bitcoin but if you are only looking for holding your balance and not informing the government then you can choose stablecoin.

[||bit]

It seems coinmarketcap want to change something about that finally.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/coinmarketcap-to-remove-exchanges-from-calculations-if-they-dont-provide-mandatory-data

A broad number of exchanges have already joined the new alliance, including Binance, Bittrex, OKEx, Huobi, Liquid, UpBit, IDEX, OceanEX, Gate.io, KuCoin, HitBTC and Bitfinex

I think it was easy for coinmarketcap to stop wash trading, it is great now they decided to do something.

[RomanPetrush]

For sure, mostly Bitcoin is not used for trading. It's used for buying and selling some goods from the darknet. There is not a lot of professional traders.

[Haunebu]

It seems coinmarketcap want to change something about that finally.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/coinmarketcap-to-remove-exchanges-from-calculations-if-they-dont-provide-mandatory-data

A broad number of exchanges have already joined the new alliance, including Binance, Bittrex, OKEx, Huobi, Liquid, UpBit, IDEX, OceanEX, Gate.io, KuCoin, HitBTC and Bitfinex

I think it was easy for coinmarketcap to stop wash trading, it is great now they decided to do something.

This is great news. The whole fake volume drama has been running for quite a while in recent times and smaller trackers already did something about this, but it is good to see CMC finally use their brains and do something appropriate regarding this matter.

People will understand which exchanges are legit in this manner thanks to a popular site like CMC and the scam exchanges will basically lose everything and disappear. More positive news.

[timerland]

Perhaps some of you might have seen this Reddit discussion about fake volume?

The data is extracted from CoinMarketCap. Simply by removing all "stablecoins" and adding up only U$ volumes, you arrive at 1.6% Bitcoin volume traded in actual cash. Everything else is stablecoins.

What do you think about this? Seems like obviously something's wrong here? Why are stablecoins even being called dollars? Makes no sense. This is a time bomb and gonna explode at some point.

I'm not a fan of stablecoins, but they do offer a convenient way of trading. You simply don't need to deal with the wait times with deposits and withdrawals, nor are there as much fees involved with conversion and generally makes a much more liquid market.

I wouldn't discount bitcoin trading volume the way you did and call the volume of all pairs with stablecoins "fake".

After all, the reserve requirements of these coins are completely out of the scope of what the bitcoin network can control. If people choose to transact with them, so be it, at their own risk, but it should still count as "legitimate volume". What is illegitimate volume is those that are generated by wash trading, which is much more difficult to estimate.

[Crypto5060]

The issue of stablecoins not being backed by anything yet traded on exchanges is worrisome due largely to the fact an exit scam can take effect any day leading lots of persons to lose their funds. If other exchanges can have USD pair like what Bittrex has it will be a better option knowing your money is safe.