Quote from: musicman90 on September 09, 2017, 08:23:28 PM

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Firstly, over the past two years from the data I've found China appear to have been BY FAR the largest traders.
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it is true only because you forgot about the history.

in about 95% of this past 2 years period that you checked, the Chinese exchanges had 0 fees (hence huge volume), were unregulated (hence reporting fake volume and also did a lot of shady things). these simply means the numbers you see are not 100% valid and also even if they are, they should not be compared with others.

an exchange with 0.2% fee can never have the same volume as an exchange with 0% fee.
reason is simple. with 0 fees you buy at 20300CNY and sell at 20301 CNY and still make profit
with 0.2% fee if you buy at 20300 CNY you need to sell at least at 20361 CNY to make any profit

if you compare the data from these past months belonging to Chinese exchanges with their last year volume you can see what i mean. you see the drastic drop in the volume.