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Crypto Wash Trading

arxiv.org

141–150 of 306 posts

Re: Crypto Wash Trading

#141
post #132

This paper jumps the gun. Detecting wash trading by examining distributions over rounded order prices is a strong and dubious claim for which they provide little evidence. The author's equate wash trading to non-rounded, clustered prices which really just indicates automated trading. Now automated ("bot") trading is a technology needed for exchanges wash trading sure, but not exclusive evidence of it. Automated tradi…

Benford's Law is a pretty established method of detecting fraud in forensic accounting.

You don't even need to detect it. Name a single instance in human history where an unregulated and unaccountable industry didn't instantly degenerate into fraud. "2.5T" "dollars" (majority held by early insiders) is an incredible moral hazard

Re: Crypto Wash Trading

#142
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We quantify the wash trading on each unregulated exchange , which averaged over 70% of the reported volume. Coinbase isn’t one of the unregulated exchanges.

The trick to wash trading on CoinBase is (or was) to be on the inside: > The order also finds that over a six-week period—August through September 2016—a former Coinbase employee used a manipulative or deceptive device by intentionally placing buy and sell orders in the Litecoin/Bitcoin trading pair on GDAX that matched each other as wash trades. This created the misleading appearance of liquidity and trading interes…

Sure, although not part of the period covered by this paper:

> Our data cover the period from 00:00 July 09th, 2019 (when TokenInsight started to collect transaction information from these exchanges) to 23:59 November 03rd, 2019 (the time we wrote the first draft).

Re: Crypto Wash Trading

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't pass the smell test. Sure, you can wash trade on Uniswap, but it's expensive and everyone can see you doing it. The fee on most pools on Uniswap is 0.30%. In contrast, wash trading on most centralized exchanges is cheap or free and very hard to prove unless you have access to their internal data.

Im specifically talking about up and coming , memecoins. The liquidity pool on these are usually provided by token owner themselves, fee doesnt matter there (gas fees does, but they make much much more by doing this). Tokens like these need these fake volumes to get the necessary amount of holders , publicity and volume to qualify to be listed on centralised exchanges. Even when everyone can see you do it, owners of…

You can't do it without putting significant capital at risk since you also have to supply the other side of the pair. If there is no organic demand for your memecoin, people will be happy to dump it and take your ETH.

Re: Crypto Wash Trading

#144
post #132

This paper jumps the gun. Detecting wash trading by examining distributions over rounded order prices is a strong and dubious claim for which they provide little evidence. The author's equate wash trading to non-rounded, clustered prices which really just indicates automated trading. Now automated ("bot") trading is a technology needed for exchanges wash trading sure, but not exclusive evidence of it. Automated tradi…

Benford's Law is a pretty established method of detecting fraud in forensic accounting.

Benford's Law requires that the numbers being analyzed typically occur over a wide distribution spanning orders of magnitude, which typically doesn't happen in trading (except over very long time periods).

Re: Crypto Wash Trading

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you trade a any security to yourself (or someone closely related to you) to give the illusion of the price going up. (EDIT: Well... it could be for any reason. But illusion of price going up is one such application of the strategy). Lets say you invent a new NFT. You sell the NFT to __yourself__ for $100. Then, you sell the NFT to yourself (again) for $200. Finally, you sell the NFT to yourself for $1000. Then y…

You do NOT need to change the prices for it to be a wash trade. What you gave me a profitable and likely illegal example of a wash trade, but not a definition of wash trade. A wash trade could be selling thing X for $100 and buying thing Y for $100 where X and Y are the same exact underlying thing. Just moving pointless trades back and forth inflates volumes, which makes people thing the market is moving. See https:/…

This is exactly right, in fact if you think about tax breaks on losses it can actually make a lot of sense to sell yourself the same asset at a loss. In the case of crypto you probably wouldn't sell an NFT at a loss, but a coin would definitely make sense to sell to yourself at a loss.

Re: Crypto Wash Trading

#146
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does Coinbase self-regulate wash trading?

> How does Coinbase self-regulate wash trading? Coinbase follows KYC laws. That prevents one person from opening two accounts and trading between them.

Huh. What if 2 people decide to do it?

Re: Crypto Wash Trading

#147

Can somebody explain to a crypto-naif what "wash trading" means here?

People think that because something is professionally and popularly marketed, and frequently painted as a "hot new trend!" that is profitable that it is a train they need to hop on to. Crypto and NFT are (relatively) new online havens for many criminals, money launderers, and scammers to hide within in the same ways that AMWAY, Time Share Vacation Sales People, and as the guys selling speakers out of their vans in a…

The creator of Bitcoin is most likely Hal Finney, who died in 2014. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Finney_(computer_scientist...

Re: Crypto Wash Trading

#148
The obsession with trading and how much fraud there is in the crypto space (enormous amounts) is distracting from the people building useful things - for both the common folk and us technical.

Look for the builders. You’ll see something special.

Re: Crypto Wash Trading

#149
post #122
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market is interdependent. Wash trading on one platform benefits all other platforms. When you ask someone the price of BTC they don't say $x on Coinbase, $y on Kraken, etc. Literally all of crypto is a scam. After 10 years there is not one feasible use case that isn't done better through another tool. I don't consider "making black markets and extortion easier" a feasible use case.

I would say there are four important use cases of Crypto so far. 1) NFTs - digital ownership 2) DAO - organizations without having to setup an LLC that allow voting etc 3) Accounting for low trust societies (supply chain management, etc) 4) Value store for very high inflation currencies, or states with severe problems

1. Digital ownership of a token. Digital assets can still be copied and distributed. Notions of ownership and title in digital are still inherently problematic. 2. This is probably not a feature society needs. 3. Possibly good? I'd say instead of "low trust" being the feature, "no natural owner of the database" describes the supply chain situation better. 4. maybe. USD, Gold, Etc have historically been good at this.

Re: Crypto Wash Trading

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "IN"? Are dollars "IN" your bank account? I'm not trying to make a tired argument about dollars being fake or something, I just don't see the distinction as far as wallets specifically are concerned.

The difference is: (a) if I don't trust "computers" it absolutely can because I can use deposit box, and (b) the government guarantees that it is via FDIC insurance plus a long list of legal alternatives if it suddenly isn't there. Crypto has neither (a) nor (b); it is specifically designed to not have (a), and I don't see it having a (b) any time soon since regulation is anathema. I see your point. Both are ledgers.…

Bitcoin was indeed founded by libertarians who believed the loss of the gold standard was the beginning of the end of western civilisation.

It’s a weird belief but - what if they’re right ? What if it did cause a lot of the problems ? Maybe not directly, but by freeing the state from a boundary-setting limiter it somehow corrupted it?

I don’t know the answer but Bitcoin is a bet that it did cause problems. And so far it’s a winning bet.

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