'Major exchanges scam with fake trading volume'

Cryptocurrency exchanges like HitBTC, DigiFinex, Huobi, Coinbene, and OKex are all faking the trading volume in their major bitcoin trading pairs. According to research from the Blockchain Transparency Institute (BTI) only three out of the top 25 BTC trading pairs across all exchanges are reporting actual volume on CoinMarketCap. The others are all massively inflated numbers, also called 'wash trading'.

Many exchanges are heavily wash trading on their trading pairs, faking 99% of the trading volume. Coinbene, OEX, Digifinex, Coinbit, Coinsbank and others have trading pairs of which the actual volume is only 1 percent of the reported volume.

The Blockchain Transparency Institute is warning crypto startups for these exchanges. These exchanges ask high listing fees averaging around $50.000. By faking their trading volume they can ask higher fees, and make more money. The researchers estimate these exchanges 'stole' 100 million dollars from the market.

Not all exchanges are bad though. On Binance the BTC/USDT trading pair is reported 100% real volume of 182 million dollars per day. On Bitfinex the pair for BTC/USD is also reported correctly, while the Japanese exchange Liquid is reporting accurate data on their BTC/JPY pair as well. Kraken, Coinbase Pro, BitFlyer, Upbit and Gemini are also trustworthy.

HitBTC and Huobi fake about 75 percent of their trading volume. Removing this volume from their numbers still gives them a spot in the Top 10 BTC trading pairs with 32 and 31 million dollars per day. Even OKex, that's faking 89% of its trading volume in the BTC/USDT pair, still makes it to the ninth spot with 19.7 million dollars on a daily basis.

In some cases these fake volumes might not be the fault of these exchanges. Bots and market manipulators might be at work as well. The Blockchain Transparency Institute is working to make sure all exchanges provide the security that consumers and investors deserve. The institute believes many exchanges only exist to collect fees from token projects. BTI wants to provide support for crypto startups to get a fair deal on listing their tokens or coins on an honest exchange.