Fake Bitcoin Transactions Double 2014 Volume

[hayek]

"These transactions account for up to 50% of all transaction volume in the past days."

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/fake-transaction-chains-double-2014-bitcoin-volume/

[hacknoid]

If the graph presented in the article is indicating that the "long chain" transactions are the "fake" ones, then that chart indicates there have always been these transactions present, and at at least roughly the same percentage.  IOW, even if you ignore the long chain transactions, there is still a definite uptrend in transaction volume.

That makes the title completely misleading, as it implies this is a new phenomenon that has skewed the transaction numbers for only the last year.

Did I miss something?  Or is the article complete BS and just clickbait?

[hacknoid]

If the graph presented in the article is indicating that the "long chain" transactions are the "fake" ones, then that chart indicates there have always been these transactions present, and at at least roughly the same percentage.  IOW, even if you ignore the long chain transactions, there is still a definite uptrend in transaction volume.

That makes the title completely misleading, as it implies this is a new phenomenon that has skewed the transaction numbers for only the last year.

Did I miss something?  Or is the article complete BS and just clickbait?

Is clickbait codeword for disliking the article now? there is plenty of articles praising bitcoin but no one wants to hear about weird stuff thats going on behind the curtain.

No, not at all.  I am very interested to read articles that talk about more details or analysis of stuff going on, but I have issue with a title that implies 2014 was somehow out of the norm in that all of a sudden these fake transactions have appeared, when there were none before.  However the contents of the article clearly show a chart that indicates there have been a consistent proportion of these fake transactions all throughout the transaction history.

I actually found the content that talked about the existence of the fake transactions to be interesting and enlightening (I didn't realize them before), but don't try to make it sound like Bitcoin is not really increasing in tx volume, because the chart is clearly indicating that it is, even when the fake transactions are removed.

[hayek]

If the graph presented in the article is indicating that the "long chain" transactions are the "fake" ones, then that chart indicates there have always been these transactions present, and at at least roughly the same percentage.  IOW, even if you ignore the long chain transactions, there is still a definite uptrend in transaction volume.

That makes the title completely misleading, as it implies this is a new phenomenon that has skewed the transaction numbers for only the last year.

Did I miss something?  Or is the article complete BS and just clickbait?

Quoting from the second paragraph in article:

"New data going back years reveals Bitcoin has a history of fake transaction chains inflating its velocity."

So yes, you can properly read a graph but not an article =)

The significant 'pumps' in fake transactions start in 2012 and are at their highest point right now - nearly 50% of all current transactions. (all of this context is in the article. Can I further clarify?)

[hayek]

Sorry for double post.

Look at the graph by year. You see we started at 50k a day in 2014. We're ending at 100k a day. 45.5k each day are faked. It's not clickbait. 50% of 2014's transactions were fake. The chains go back further but were not as prevalent as they were in 2014 - or rather they are currently at an all-time high

The lines are just averages. The faded area behind the lines is the portion of fake/real txs. I didn't make the graph it was from ycombinator but the raw data is also available for you at the bottom of the article.

[DeathAndTaxes]

 The word fake is biased.   Fake indicates someone created those transactions for the purpose of misleading someone.   The reality is that anytime a coin is "moved" it is a transaction.  Not all transactions are "economic" in the sense of a change of ownership or payments for goods and services.   For example a well run exchange may generate number of transactions internally.   Depositing should go the cold wallet, periodically they are consolidated to reduce key management and security concerns, a portion is transferred to hot wallet, hot wallet pays out withdraws, customer may change wallets, and then later may deposit back to the exchange using same deposit address.   That may be 5 or more transactions per cycle.  Was all of that "economic" (in the sense of velocity)?  No but it wasn't "fake" either.

[hacknoid]

Sorry for double post.

Look at the graph by year. You see we started at 50k a day in 2014. We're ending at 100k a day. 45.5k each day are faked. It's not clickbait. 50% of 2014's transactions were fake. The chains go back further but were not as prevalent as they were in 2014 - or rather they are currently at an all-time high

The lines are just averages. The faded area behind the lines is the portion of fake/real txs. I didn't make the graph it was from ycombinator but the raw data is also available for you at the bottom of the article.

Perhaps 'clickbait' is a bit harsh - as I said, I did get some interesting and useful information from the article.  Unfortunately pastebin is blocked from my work, so I can't see the source data, and it's hard to see on the chart, though the 30-day trend is easy to see.  So, best I can do is eyeball the data as presented in the article...

When I look at the chart, the 30-day average at the end of 2014 looks to be about 85K transactions, while the non-faked-only total is at about 65K.  So that's more like 24% fake (and that was the largest departure between the lines). Looking back around July 2012, the total non-faked appears to average around 20K, while the total with faked is around 35K, so that indicates about a 43% total being faked at that time.  Further back, the numbers are smaller, so that in July 2011 the numbers including faked were around 10K while the non-faked amount to maybe 6K, or about 40% faked.

So I maintain - the overall numbers are higher in 2014, while the faked percentages have not really changed that much (in fact, the percentages appear to have decreased more recently).  Hence my disapproval of the way the data is presented by the title.

[hayek]

D&T I appreciate what you're pointing out.

Using transactions as a means to gauge spending is bad. There is nothing (I know of?) to indicate someone is actually spending coin, moving coins as part of a business process, or faking transactions. What I mean is, even if we agreed on a definition of economic activity or what constitutes a 'real' or 'fake' transaction doesn't even matter.

I don't have a problem holding the opinion that when someone creates the exact same pattern of transactions nearly every day and is clearly just sending it back to keys they control that they are not buying something or new adopters.