Wash Trading on Top 40 Crypto Exchanges Reduces by 35.7% in 2019: Report

Since the beginning of 2019, global wash trading has reduced by 35.7% among the top 40 cryptocurrency exchanges, reported Blockchain Transparency Institute (BTI) in its latest report.

The leading crypto exchange Binance is now under 10% wash trading, down from 20% in the first few months of 2019. Gemini, that has been around 15% has come down under 10% while below 5% over the past few months is detected on Bitflyer.

The report further states that CoinMarketCap (CMC) still lists “spam exchanges” in its Top 10 ‘adjusted volume’ rankings.

These exchanges include LBank, BW.com, Bit-Z, Coinbene, and OEX that has high levels of wash trading ranging from 96.9% up to 99.7%.

Among the top 100 crypto exchanges on CME, BTI reports of 73 exchanges wash trading over 90% of their volumes — meaning only a quarter publish a true volume of trades.

As such, a drop of 25-50% on long candle wicks with low sell volume can be seen due to the “order books being filled up with fake liquidity and trades.” Moreover, many of these exchanges also post ghost orders and trade executions.

Ethereum, USDT, and Privacy Coin account for Highest fake Volume

When it comes to cryptocurrencies that are wash traded the highest by volume, among top cryptos, Ethereum is at the top with 75% wash trading followed by Litecoin at 74% and XRP at 55%. Most of this wash trading, the report says can be attributed to three exchanges viz. OKEx, Bibox, and Huobi.

Bitcoin’s still around 50%.

However, the most heavily wash traded cryptos are Ethereum Classic (ETC), Monero (XMR), and Dash at more than 80% fake volume, largely due to OKEx, Bibox, and Bithumb.

As for the least wash traded digital currencies, at under 25%, it’s Maker Dao, Binance Coin, and LEO.

“Wash trading among the Top-500 tokens we are tracking is trending down over the past 90 days.”

When it comes to fiat-backed stablecoins, USDT, that reminds the top one, accounts for 94% of all actual stablecoin trading volume. However, in terms of wash trading as well, it has the highest share of 67.3%.

USDC meanwhile, is the fastest-growing stablecoin this year and has the lowest global wash trading value at just 7% over the past 90 days.

TUSD and PAX have around 12% and 13.7% respectively while at fifth spot DAI is showing 30.2% of wash trading.