Few Big Exchanges Continue to Report Fake Volumes in 2019: Chainalysis

Large crypto exchanges appear to have stopped misreporting their trading volumes in 2019, a new study by Chainalysis says.

According to the New York-based blockchain analytics firm, there are still some crypto exchanges including Bitforex that likely report fake trading volumes to simulate greater market activity and liquidity.

Chinalysis further analyzed 25 other exchanges with large on-chain volumes out of the Bitwise 10 list.

The firm eventually identified 12 more exchanges whose trade volume to on-chain volume ratios significantly differed from the Bitwise 10 in 2018, but have since declined more in line with the exemplary data.

The 12 exchanges list included Huobi, OKCoin, UPbit, Bithumb, Bit2c, Bitbank, Bitso, CoinCheck, Coinfloor, CoinOne, Korbit, and Zaif.12 exchanges including Huobi and Bithumb stopped misreporting volumes in 2019Based on the data, Chinalysis concluded that it's likely that those 12 exchanges were faking trade volume in 2018, specifically during the period between July and January 2019.

Since 2019, the exchanges' trade volume ratios have tracked more closely with those of the Bitwise 10, suggesting that they have stopped misreporting volumes.

Some exchanges are allegedly still practicing misreportingWhile the majority of exchanges appear to have moved away from faking volumes, there were still some exchanges that saw suspicious activity.

According to Chainalysis, reported a trade volume ratio of 40,000:1 in a period from January 2019 to November 2019.

Bitwise's study in 2019 claimed that 95% of volume on unregulated exchanges was fakeChinalysis' new study follows a report by crypto index fund provider Bitwise Asset Management claiming that as much as 95% of volume on unregulated exchanges appears to be fake or non-economic in nature.

On Nov. 12, major crypto data supplier CoinMarketCap launched its new metric to compare exchanges and token pairs based on liquidity as a measure to prevent manipulation by exchanges.