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The Block analyzed 48 cryptocurrency exchanges, focusing on monthly traffic over the past six months (ranging from November 2018 to April 2019)
There were nearly 800 million cryptocurrency exchange website visits in that time period
The Block compared the number of website visits to trading volume across exchanges to identify suspects that participate in faking trading volume, as indicated by disproportionately high volume relative to website visits
The exchanges that have by far the highest volume per website visit, and which are likely engaging in significant volume faking are Coineal, Fatbtc, BW, BitMax, LBank, DOBI Exchange, Bit-Z, DigiFinex, Idcm, DragonEX, ZB, CoinTiger, IDAX, Bibox, CoinBene, BitForex, Bithumb, Negocie Coins, Liquid and OKEx
On the other hand, Indodax, BX Thailand, Luno, CEX.IO, Zaif, and KuCoin do not appear to be faking any volume unless they are also engaging in faking traffic
Over the past six months, the total reported trading volume was $1.96 trillion, of which only $272.5 billion appears to be real trading volume on non-volume faking exchanges
About 86% of the trading volume looks to be fake with 65% of that total real volume originating on Binance and Bitfinex, both of which have virtually no regulatory oversight
Footnotes
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