Quote from: samovarul on March 21, 2018, 02:12:47 PM

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

Quote

Why should you care?
One may argue that since its not a regulated market its not even illegal, why shouldnt 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 theyre 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 youre 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 currencys 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?