Wash Trading Report Slammed by OKEx Who Rank High

A report that came out in March this year stunned the cryptocurrency? community as Bitwise, who ran the research, suggested that as much as 95 percent of volume? being reported was faked. Faked volume?, also known as wash trading, is a nefarious practice that is aimed at giving undue legitimacy to exchanges, and in this case, cryptocurrency? exchanges. 

Since this revelation, there has been work done to try and quell the faked volumes and reach a situation where what is being reported can be trusted. Even the likes of Ripple have said that they expect to be reporting far lower numbers in the future as they look to try and ensure that what they report from exchanges is accurate. 

With this, a recent report from the Blockchain? Transparency Institute has shown that there has been an almost 40 percent reduction in the fake volume?, or wash trading numbers - which is a good start, but not the whole picture. Theresearch breaks down which exchanges, and even which countries are giving the most accurate data. 

With that, they have released that Kraken and Coinbase for delivering the most accurate data in regards to wash trading, but they have also slammed OKEx, who they claim are among the worst when it comes to this aspect of bad business. 

However, this has caused a backlash from OKEx who have refuted the fresh allegations of such manipulative practices. They spoke with Cointelegraph and said that the recent report from the Blockchain? Transparency Institute (BTI) were “not accurate and misleading.”

Reducing Wash trading

In the report form the Blockchain? Transparency Institute, they explained how, in their fifth iteration of their report, they have been looking at wash trading and its effects on the market.

“Since the start of 2019, global wash trading has reduced by 35.7% among the real Top-40 exchanges. The process of sharing our data reports with many of these exchanges has resulted in enhanced mechanisms for detecting wash trading accounts and shutting them down.”

The report reveals that the cleanest exchanges since its latest report continue to be Kraken, Coinbase, Poloniex, and Upbit. OKEx and Bibox, on the other hand, are the exchanges with the highest rates of wash trading according to the report's real ranking of the top-40 exchanges. 

The BTI report further found that Japan and the United States lead the world in exchanges with accurate reporting. The reports adds:

“This can be due to several factors, the main of which is the legal and regulatory standards in these countries. However, stricter regulatory frameworks do not always produce the cleanest exchanges.”

OKEx slams report

With the finger being pointed at OKEx by the report, the exchange? has struck back and said:

“Due to the complexity of derivative instruments trading, thousands of trades could be placed per day by a single user via collocated machines. Attempting to use retail-oriented parameters such as website/mobile traffic in any research is de-facto an apple-to-orange comparison.”