Binance Critic Says tthe Exchange is Faking Trading Volumes to Build Up Business, Possible Russia Ban

Binance is one of the biggest platforms in the world, but even this exchange gets its share of critics. One such critic has gone as far as to say that the whole business is based on fake volumes. The critic, who happens to be a major proponent of Bitcoin SV and Craig Wright, has gone as far as to say that the exchange needs to be banned in Russia, due to the threats from CEO Changpeng Zhao to de-list Bitcoin SV.

The critic’s name is Yevgeny Devine, who is an investor in Bitcoin SV. Now, however, he is threatening to start a campaign within Russia that would call for the forced withdrawal of Binance from their jurisdiction. Zhao had issued the threat against Wright that he would no longer keep Bitcoin SV on his platform if the behavior against anonymous user Hodlonaut continued. Wright had recently issued a bounty for anyone who could show his identity.

Devine chose to initiate more drama as a result of the statement, saying that Binance had “lost a $5B consortium” in his threat. He added that if Zhao chooses to continue his behavior, then local authorities would need to “discuss” what would need to happen about whether Binance would be allowed to continue operating in Russia.

Binance just lost a $5B consortium by threatening one of our investments.

Anymore of this shit, we discuss banning Binance in Russia with our authorities. There's a plenty of subject. https://t.co/j0mG2LNes5

— Yevgeny⚖️Devine (@yevgenydevine) April 12, 2019

Even with the new threat from Devine, most of the crypto community was not even a little worried, since they believe that Bitcoin SV has much more to lose than Binance does right now. That said, these proponents of Binance do not think that Russia will end up banning the exchange at all.

BSV’s entire existence is built on CSW’s (failed) claim he is Satoshi. You have bigger problems than an exchange delisting your alt coin. Perhaps deal with that first?

— 𝗕𝗶𝗴 𝗙𝗿𝗶𝘇𝘇𝘆 (@AiryOrange) April 13, 2019

The attack that Devine has launched against Binance is not exclusively due to Zhao’s disbelief that Wright is Satoshi, but also due to his comments that Binance has only risen this high from fake volumes. He noted that the only reason that Russia has not banned Binance at this point is that there were groups that told the authorities to

“go soft on exchanges of their own preference.”

Binance wasn't banned in Russia solely because certain entities advised the authorities to go soft on exchanges of their own preference, Binance being such, despite its ~70-80% fake liquidity, while pushing the banning of their more legitimate competitors: Bitfinex and Bitstamp.

— Yevgeny⚖️Devine (@yevgenydevine) April 12, 2019

Devine’s comments continued, as he simply accused the exchange of falsifying volume, even though he did not add any facts or other supporting information to sway followers to his side. Instead, he simply stated that Binance only became the biggest exchange in the world as a result of lying about their volumes.

The business of CZ was built on fake volume — it allowed him to market his exchange as "the biggest crypto exchange in the world", which attracted crypto projects that desperately wanted to get listed, as well as unsophisticated traders.

His power is built on violation of trust.

— Yevgeny⚖️Devine (@yevgenydevine) April 12, 2019

Even though there is a chance that Devine is completely wrong, that does not mean that fake volumes are not a real problem in the crypto industry. Bitwise recently released information that they offered to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), showing that about 95% of all of the current reported volume is false.

1/ New Research from us @BitwiseInvest.

As part of 226 slides presented to the SEC on our ETF filing, we did a first-of-its-kind analysis of *order book data* from all 81 exchanges reporting >$1M in BTC volume on CMC.

TLDR: 95% of reported volume is fake but LOTS of good news! pic.twitter.com/TuXLlDCRyP

— Bitwise (@BitwiseInvest) March 22, 2019

The report continues, saying that two of the few exchanges that actually have any kind of real volume are Binance and BitFinex, contrary to the claims of Devine. There were 8 other exchanges that the company shows to have real cryptocurrency volume. Still, the fact that 95% of CoinMarketCap’s volume is fake is worrisome. CryptoIntegrity, a group of anonymous researchers, created a report as well, revealing that 86% of the trade volumes logged on cryptocurrency exchanges are false.

Considering how frequently critics like to attack the crypto industry, these details are like adding fuel to the fire. Still, the allegations from Devine are only accusations at the moment, and evidence will need to be presented if Devine plans to have anyone rally behind him.