Since April 2019, wash trading among the top-40 best cryptocurrency exchanges has been reduced by 35.7%. This is according to a recent report released by the Blockchain Transparency Institute (BTI).
Wash Trading Falls Among Top Exchanges
As reported by BTI, the process of gathering data from exchanges resulted in enhanced mechanisms that allow analysts to have better data about wash trading.
BTI informs the cleanest exchanges in the market are Kraken, Poloniex, Coinbase and Upbit. However, those exchanges with the largest percentage of wash trading included OKEx and Bibox.
Despite faking their volumes – in many cases over 75% – their real volumes after removing wash trading are very high, placing them in the top-20 ranking.
Both, the United States and Japan are among the countries with the cleanest exchanges. The report explains that this situation could be related to the legal and regulatory standards in these two nations.
BTI verified exchanges include Kraken, Coinbasem Upbit, Binance, Liquid, Poloniex, Bittrex, Gemini, Gate.io, Bitso, Lykke, bitFlyer and INDODAX. Other exchanges can get BTI verified if they apply for it.
Some of the exchanges with the largest wash trading rates include OEX, LBank, BW, Bit-Z and Coinbene. These exchanges registered high levels of wash trading, from 96.9% to 99.7%.
Image via Blockchain Transparency Institute report.BTI is also launching their first Hotwire email that warns token projects about shady exchanges that are trying to extract listing fees out of projects based on fake volumes. Some exchanges that are faking their volume and are requesting large sums of money to list tokens include BitMax and P2PB2B.
Bitcoin (BTC) is being washed traded by around 50%, as reported by BTI. Ethereum (ETH) wash trading reaches 75% while XRP is at 55%. Meanwhile, Litecoin (LTC) registered a wash trading rate of 74%.
The main exchanges performing this wash trading include OKEx, Bibox and also Huobi. Other coins such as Ethereum Classic (ETC), Monero (XMR) and Dash, have been the most wash traded tokens with over 80% fake volumes from platforms such as OKEx, Bibox and Bithumb.
Stablecoins Are Also Affected
Regarding the growing stablecoin market, Tether (USDT) accounts for 94% of all actual stablecoin trading volume. That means that without taking into account wash trading, Tether remains the largest and most popular stablecoin in the market.
However, USD Coin (USDC) is the fastest-growing stablecoin this year, reaching the second position. At the same time, it has the lowest global wash trading value at under 7%. TrueUSD has a wash trading of 12%, followed by Paxos Standard (PAX) at 13.7%. DAI has a 30.2% wash trading with the lowest real trading volume among these five stablecoins.
The cryptocurrency market is trying to be legitimated and initiatives such as the one proposed by BTI will help the whole crypto space improve its services and metrics.
Wash trading is a process in which crypto platforms artificially increase their trading volumes trying to provide misleading information to investors. In this way, these exchanges gain more visibility in websites such as CoinMarketCap, one of the most visited in the world.
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