Report Claims Over 80 Percent of Top 25 BTC Trading Pair Volumes on CMC Are Wash Traded

A new report from data researchers at the Blockchain Transparency Institute claims that the majority of the top 25 Bitcoin trading pairs listed on CoinMarketCap are based upon "Grossly" inflated false volumes.

BTI presents its report as "a deeper dive into specific trading pairs on exchanges which are showing clear evidence of wash trading." The data has reportedly been compiled by using algorithms to analyze volume data points and order books, as well as by consulting with "Market makers, high frequency traders, and trade surveillance consultants" over a period of three months.

"Most of these pairs' actual volume is under 1% of their reported volume on CMC. We noted only 2 out of the top 25 pairs not to be grossly wash trading their volume, Binance and Bitfinex."

The report concludes that, based on its findings, "Over 80% of the CMC top 25 BTC pairs volume is wash traded."

BTI's volume analysis for the top 25 BTC trading pairs on CoinMarketCap.

"Clear evidence" of wash trading was also found for Huobi and HitBTC, "But to a lesser degree" than OKEx, according to the report.

BTI further states it analyzed Bithumb and found "a large amount" of wash trading primarily with altcoins Monero, Dash, Bitcoin Gold and ZCash; the "Top wash traded tokens" on Bithumb, according to the report, vary for each given month.

"Over 50 exchanges wash trading over 95% of their volumes," the report continues, some of them making "Over" $1 million this year solely via fees.

As reported, the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission has this year demanded extensive trading data from several crypto exchanges as part of a probe into possible manipulation in the crypto spot markets and its potential impact on BTC futures.

The U.S. Department of Justice opened a separate investigation into BTC and Ethereum price manipulation, looking into how traders may be manipulating prices through illegal spoofing and wash trading.