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Singapore-based cryptocurrency Bitforex raised all the wrong flags by moving from the zero trading volume of four months ago to $ 5 billion currently.
"Four months ago, BitForex was just one of the many obscure exchanges that offered users the ability to exchange cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin," says Bloomberg in a study of false volume reports with cryptographic exchanges. "Today … it regularly records daily transactions that exceed $ 5 billion – almost matching the turnover of the 217-year-old London Stock Exchange".
The obvious question that follows is how did Bitforex and other similar start-ups expand so quickly despite a crypto market that lost about 80% of its value this year?
Well, many experts and market players suspect incorrect play. They believe that these "fast-growing exchanges" offer incentives that encourage users to inflate volumes, or do not do enough to stop abuse on their platforms.
The Bitforex volume is the largest
"A red flag on BitForex: its reported volume is by far the largest of the 219 platforms monitored by CoinMarketCap.com, despite the traffic on its website being equal to a small part of most colleagues," says Bloomberg .
A simple view of CoinMarketCap.com's report on the volume and visits to the cryptographic exchanges website reveals that some of them report volumes that far outweigh their web traffic.
"On that metric, DOBI Trade, BitForex and Liquid stand out for registering transactions many times larger than visits to the website," which is highly suspect, adds Bloomberg.
Liquid says that the website traffic on www.liquid.com is low compared to its volume as it has recently changed the name of the exchanges and users are still migrating from its old websites.
Cashing could be a big problem
The newsletter explains that "for individual investors attracted by exchanges with inflated volumes, the risk is that the collection at prevailing market rates may prove to be much more difficult than suggested by the data reported".
Bitforex Vice President Garrett Jin responded to the allegations by saying that trading on his platform has increased due to its so-called mining transaction system.
However, the study states that the transaction mining or mining trade is a very controversial practice. For example, on Bitforex, minors earn the equivalent of $ 1.20 in digital tokens issued by the exchange for every $ 1 in transaction fees.
"This is a system that critics say is tailor-made to encourage washing trading – in which a trader, or a team of traders, buys and sells the same asset several times to inflate the market" , explains Bloomberg.
Jim Bai, CEO of EverMarkets Exchange, told Bloomberg that he believes that cryptocurrency trade will become more reliable as the industry grows. However, he adds, "the false volumes are unfortunately all too common in today's crypto-exchange ecosystem".
