Fake Trading Volumes and the Price of Bitcoin: Are They Connected?

Image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

            MARCH 30, 2020

Last year, Bitwise Asset Management reported to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission that 95% of trading volume in Bitcoin (BTC) was fake. Bitwise found that, according to data published by CoinMarketCap — a widely cited tracker of crypto statistics — Bitcoin's approximate average daily volume in April 2019 was $10 billion. In comparison, just $5.5 billion worth of Apple stock — the most liquid stock in the world — trades daily, and the market cap of Apple stock is nine times the size of Bitcoin's.

The Blockchain Transparency Institute has been investigating fake volume in crypto markets since 2018. Its April 2019 report suggested that 17 of the 25 largest exchanges listed on CoinMarketCap had more than 99% fake volume. The most recent report from September 2019 showed "wash trading rates at high levels from 96.9% up to 99.7%."

As recently as 2019, the exchanges reporting the most volume were in some cases unheard of. According to Bitwise's research, the largest reported exchange from April 2019, FCoin, declared $1.7 billion in daily trading volume, despite at the time having just 4,781 followers on Twitter. It had been mentioned only four times on Bloomberg, all in the context of fake trading volume, and the marketing tool Alexa ranked it as having the 56,539th largest website globally.

The Bitwise study ranked Binance as the largest exchange with real volume, though it ranked 15th overall when those reporting fake volumes were included. During April 2019, Binance reported $218 million in daily trading volume — 1/7th that of FCoin — despite being mentioned 6,830 times by Bloomberg, its CEO being followed by 342,000 people on Twitter, and having a website that ranked 971th in the world, according to Alexa.

The Bitcoin market is steadily maturing, to be sure, and today's Bitcoin market is not like it was in the past. Many first-generation pillars of the Bitcoin ecosystem were started by first-time entrepreneurs who were simply interested in Bitcoin. Mt. Gox, the beleaguered, Japan-based Bitcoin exchange, was once a site for trading Magic: The Gathering cards. CoinMarketCap, the most popular data aggregator in the space, was started in 2013 as a part-time project run out of an apartment.

Today, the best-known crypto exchanges are large enterprises operating in a maturing ecosystem. Regulated Bitcoin futures, the development of institutional short lending, large algorithmic market makers, Bitcoin custody and custodial insurance have added to the efficiency of the market. Despite Bitcoin's faked volume, and a spot market smaller than commonly thought, its price is more accurately determined every day.

Bitcoin spot prices, as well as other larger-cap cryptocurrencies, are considered accurate, thanks to an established global market for Bitcoin trading and the prevalence of exchanges around the world. What's more, traditional data aggregators — think Nasdaq, the Intercontinental Exchange, Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters — are entering the industry, which will give us only a clearer picture of the data that affects Bitcoin trading.

Internet attention and the price of Bitcoin

Researchers from the University of Cagliari in Italy used Google Trends, which illustrates how frequently a fixed term is looked up, to study the interplay between Bitcoin and Google's search engine. They specifically researched the relationship between Bitcoin's trading volumes and the volume of Bitcoin-related search queries made using Google.

In a report titled "The Predictor Impact of Web Search Media on Bitcoin Trading Volumes," the researchers found "significant cross correlation values, demonstrating search volumes power to anticipate trading volumes of Bitcoin currency."

The researchers studied the period between June 2014 and July 2015 and compared Bitcoin trading behavior with data on search queries obtained from Google Trends. The report concluded:

"We can affirm that Google Trends is a good predictor, because of its high cross correlation value. Our results confirm those found in previous works, based on a different corpus and referred to a different Bitcoin market trend. As future advancement, we are thinking about the possibility to apply this kind of approach to different contexts in order to better understand the predictive power of web search media. An other likelihood could be to consider not only search media but also social media like Twitter, Facebook and Google+."

As trading both digital assets and more traditional stocks and commodities become progressively digitized, online mentions will likely play a key role in determining and predicting the sentiment of various markets, not just cryptocurrency.

Crypto has "no exposure" to stocks and macroeconomics

In a 2018 report titled "Risks and Returns of Cryptocurrency," researchers Yukun Liu and Aleh Tsyvinski from Yale University found that the risk–return tradeoff of Bitcoin, Ether (ETH) and XRP differs from those seen in stocks, fiat currencies and precious metals. "Cryptocurrencies have no exposure to most common stock market and macroeconomic factors," they wrote. "They also have no exposure to the returns of currencies and commodities."

The authors concluded that cryptocurrency returns can only be predicted by aspects specific to crypto:

"Specifically, we determine that there is a strong time-series momentum effect and that proxies for investor attention strongly forecast cryptocurrency returns."

In short, cryptocurrency returns have little exposure to traditional asset classes, such as stocks, fiat currencies and commodities.

The researchers determined that cryptocurrency returns are predicted by two factors: momentum and investor attention.

"Our findings call into question popular explanations that supply factors such as mining costs, price-to-'dividend' ratio, or realized volatility are useful for predicting the behavior of cryptocurrency returns."

How is Bitcoin trading regulated?

When trading Bitcoin, knowing the rules and regulations is essential. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service declared in 2014 that Bitcoin was property, not currency. Any profits made from Bitcoin investing and trading, therefore, would be taxed at each investor's capital gains rate, not an ordinary income rate. 

In July 2019, the IRS sent letters to 10,000 digital-currency holders who failed to pay taxes or properly report taxes on digital assets. IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig stated:

"Taxpayers should take these letters very seriously by reviewing their tax filings and when appropriate, amend past returns and pay back taxes, interest and penalties."

Altcoins and having a plan

There are other things to keep in mind when trading. Before trading a specific digital asset, especially those considered altcoins, investigate its trading volume. If you're considering trading a more obscure altcoin, then you should learn how many such tokens are being bought and sold daily.

The higher the trading volume, the easier it will be to buy and sell the digital asset. Low trading volume, on the other hand, suggests a lower level of liquidity; that is, a trader could struggle to buy or sell the digital asset on the open market. Crypto exchanges have even delisted tokens with dubious or declining trade volumes.

Having a plan for every trade can help ensure you don't make a knee-jerk reaction in a fit of emotion-based trading. Disciplined investors and traders draft a game plan for the prices at which they intend to buy and sell an asset and don't deviate from this plan. In order to manage this, traders can use stop-loss orders, which ensure an asset is sold at a predetermined price.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Justin O'Connell is the founder of ChangeOutput.com, a communications shop for blockchain. He first wrote about Bitcoin in early 2012 and has worked in the industry ever since. He has software engineering experience, and his written work has appeared throughout the industry over the years.

Original article posted on the CoinTelegraph.com site, by Justin O'Connell.

Article re-posted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

Report: Binance Futures Surpasses Bitmex in 24hr Bitcoin (BTC) Trade Volume

The Binance Futures platform is less than a year old but has managed to eclipse BitMex in 24 hour trade volume.

In Brief:

• According to a new report, the Binance futures platform has eclipsed BitMex in 24-hour trade volume.
• At its peak, Binance Futures managed an all-time-high of $9 Billion in Bitcoin (BTC) futures contracts in a day.
• Binance has continually kept building and being a few steps ahead of the competition.

In a tweet a few days ago, the Vice President of the Binance Futures platform, Aaron Gong, announced that the platform was now leading in terms of the volume of Bitcoin (BTC) contracts traded in a 24 hour period. Mr. Gong went on to thank users of the platform who have made this feat possible.

$2.3 Billion in 24hr Trade Volume, Eclipsing Bitmex

The exchange went on to release a full report explaining that the platform's BTC perpetual contract was averaging $2.343 Billion in 24-hour trade volume compared to Bitmex's $2.121 Billion in a similar time frame. At one point, Binance successfully handled $9 Billion worth of Bitcoin contracts in a day.

Rapid Growth of the Binance Futures Platform

Launched in September 2019, the Binance futures platform currently has 24 USDT contracts covering major digital assets such as BTC, Ethereum, XRP, Litecoin, Dash, Link and more. Such a variety has allowed the exchange to host half of all the top 10 most liquid altcoin contracts. (Also to note, is that in September 2019, the exchange acquired JEX: a crypto derivatives trading platform.) Mr. Gong is quoted as explaining that the trustworthiness of Binance is the reason for its accelerated growth.

Since our inception, it has been an exciting time for traders as crypto markets displayed stronger demand and volatility. Therefore, choosing a reliable and trustworthy exchange for risk-hedging has never been more critical than before. Hopefully, Binance Futures emerge as the market-standard choice for traders as we continue to expand our ecosystem throughout 2020.

Additionally, Binance has one of the lowest trading fee structure available in the crypto-verse as well as a considerably stable and quick matching engine.

(Feature image courtesy of Sheri Hooley on Unsplash.)

Disclaimer: This article is not meant to give financial advice. Any additional opinion herein is purely the author's and does not represent the opinion of Ethereum World News or any of its other writers. Please carry out your own research before investing in any of the numerous cryptocurrencies available. Thank you.

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Original article posted on the EthereumWorldNews.com site, by John P. Njui.

Article re-posted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

Bitcoin Gains After US Federal Announces Unlimited Stimulus

By RTTNews Staff Writer | Published: 3/24/2020 2:15 PM ET

Cryptocurrency rose over $14 billion in 24 hours as the most popular digital currency Bitcoin is up 5%.

Bitcoin is trading at $6,628, up 5.19% from previous day and 35.08% from last week, according to data from Cointelegrah. Ethereum is up nearly 5% at $137, while Litecoin rose 4% to $39.93 and XRP recorded a more than 3% jump.

According to CNBC, the market capitalization, or entire value of the cryptocurrency market, rose over $14 billion to reach $182.62 billion.

The increase in Bitcoin's price came after the US federal government announced $700 billion of direct capital injection through the purchase of Treasury securities and mortgage-backed debt. The Fed said that they will purchase bonds by as much as needed to help the economy absorb shocks arising from the coronavirus pandemic.

In an interview with CBS on March 22, Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis said, "There is an infinite amount of cash in the Federal Reserve. We will do whatever we need to do to make sure there's enough cash in the banking system."

Bitcoin is currently on course to reach $7,000 levels.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

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Article written by an RTT News Staff Writer, and posted on the RTT News.com website.

Article reposted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

Report: Bitcoin’s (BTC) Correlation With the S&P 500 at a 2 Year High

The last 2 weeks has seen the price of Bitcoin follow that of traditional stock markets.

In brief:

• Since news broke of the extensive spread of the Coronavirus, Bitcoin (BTC) has had an uncanny correlation to the traditional stock markets.
• A recent report by the team at Santiment shows that Bitcoin's correlation to the S&P 500 is at a 2 year high.
• The report went on to predict a faster Crypto recovery compared to the stock market.

Ever since the traditional markets took a nose dive due to the global economic effect of the Coronavirus, Bitcoin traders have noticed an uncanny correlation between BTC and the major stock market indices of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) and the S&P 500 (SPX). All three assets have followed a similar downward trajectory as seen in the Tradingview screenshot below.

Bitcoin's Correlation with the S&P 500 at a 2 Year High

The team at Santiment recently released a report proving that BTC's correlation with the S&P 500 is at a 2 year high. They too were inspired to do the research when both the crypto and stock markets took a massive hit by the impact of the Coronavirus. In the report, the team explained the correlation as follows:

Within the last week, Bitcoin’s correlation with the S&P 500 index ballooned to a 2-year high, and is currently hovering at 0.6…

They further explained the value of 0.6 as follows:

• 1 -> BTC and S&P move identically
• 0 -> BTC and S&P move completely independent from each other
• -1 -> BTC and S&P move in opposite directions

Prediction that Bitcoin Will Recover Faster than Traditional Markets

At the end of the report, the team suggested that Bitcoin and crypto will recover faster than the stock markets. They explained that the crypto market is a new type of economy that is yet to be bogged down by the complexities of the traditional markets.

Crypto is a new type of economy, one that facilitates the production of digital value designed to be distributed in a pure, peer-to-peer way. These and correlated factors have contributed to swift recovery of the crypto market in the past, and will no doubt do the same again.

On the other side of the coin, the traditional markets remain overburdened with too many moving parts. The Wall Street machinery is partially digital (notably the part responsible for the most growth in recent years) but the vast majority remains carpal, physical in nature.

(Feature image courtesy of Pineapple Supply Co. on Unsplash.)

Disclaimer: This article is not meant to give financial advice. Any additional opinion herein is purely the author’s and does not represent the opinion of Ethereum World News or any of its other writers. Please carry out your own research before investing in any of the numerous cryptocurrencies available. Thank you.

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Original article posted on the EthereumWorldNews.com site, by John P. Njui.

Article re-posted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

Two Canadians Sentenced To Federal Prison For Bitcoin Fraud

By RTTNews Staff Writer | Published: 3/20/2020 10:36 AM ET

Two Canadian nationals have been indicted and sentenced to two years in the U.S. federal prison and three years' supervised release for committing Bitcoin fraud in a Twitter scam, according to a statement by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ).

Karanjit Singh Khatkar, 23, and Jagroop Singh Khatkar, 24, conspired to commit wire fraud and money laundering to steal bitcoin from an Oregon resident. The Khatkars are residents of the city of Surrey in British Columbia, Canada.

Karanjit Khatkar was arrested on July 18, 2019 upon arrival at the McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas and was detained pending trial. Jagroop Khatkar appeared voluntarily in the court on December 16, 2019.

Both the Khatkars pleaded guilty. They also paid $142,349 as a prepayment of restitution to their victim.

The two defendants used a Twitter account with the name @HitBTCAssist between October 2017 and August 2018 to trick victims into thinking they were communicating with a customer service representative from Hong Kong-based crypto currency exchange HitBTC.

In the process, the defendants responded to the Oregon victim's query about cryptocurrency withdrawal process from her HitBTC account. They hoodwinked her to extract information and managed to log in and take over her email and HitBTC accounts as well as her account at U.S.-based crypto exchange Kraken.

They then transferred 23.2 bitcoins from the victim's HitBTC account to Karanjit Khatkar's Kraken account, with Karanjit Khatkar in turn transferring about 11.6 bitcoins to Jagroop Khatkar's Kraken account.

Two days after, Karanjit Khatkar used the amount to buy a Mercedes-Benz with C$56,598 and Karanjit Khatkar used tens of thousands of dollars for gambling while staying at high-end casinos in Las Vegas.

Apart from the restitution prepayment, the Khatkars were ordered to pay an additional $42,162 to the victim for a total of $184,511. This case was investigated by FBI and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys for the District of Oregon.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

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Article written by an RTT News Staff Writer, and posted on the RTT News.com website.

Article reposted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

Bitcoin Price Spikes to $7K as Fed Balance Sheet Nears $5 Trillion

Image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

            MARCH 20, 2020

Bitcoin (BTC) was gearing up to crack $7,000 on March 20 as the cryptocurrency's miraculous turnaround produced almost 90% weekly gains.

Cryptocurrency market daily overview. Source: Coin360

Data from Coin360 and Cointelegraph Markets showed BTC/USD trading at around $6,600 on Friday, having risen by more than 20% in the preceding 24 hours alone.

Exchange spreads were wide — on Bitstamp, for example, an unusual one-minute candle briefly took Bitcoin to $7,140.

Bitcoin 1-day price chart. Source: Coin360

Bullish momentum intensified in the second half of the week, following fresh announcements of liquidity printing by central banks on a historically unprecedented scale.

As Cointelegraph reported, in-house analyst Keith Wareing predicted that BTC/USD would top out at around $7,200. For this, $6,400 should remain as support, he said.

Fed balance sheet hits record

The events place Bitcoin firmly at odds with stocks and the wider traditional market. In the United States, where markets failed to react to monetary stimulus promises, the Federal Reserve's balance sheet hit record highs of $4.66 trillion.

Over the past week, the balance sheet increased by $356 billion, claiming the title of the largest such increase ever since 2008 — the height of the global financial crisis.

Analysts had increasingly argued that the coronavirus pandemic's side effects had become worse than 2008, while Bitcoin appeared to weather its first global financial meltdown.

Other safe-haven assets, notably gold, were yet to stage a similar recovery on Friday. At press time, XAU/USD was still down 5.6% for the week, after a modest 3.4% rebound.

Original article posted on the CoinTelegraph.com site, by William Suberg.

Article re-posted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

Coinbase Rolls Out Bitcoin Batching To Cut Transaction Fees By 50%

By RTTNews Staff Writer | Published: 3/17/2020 10:33 AM ET

US-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase rolled out a new feature called Bitcoin transaction batching, which is expected to save users more than 50% on network fees and also significantly reduce the load on the Bitcoin blockchain network.

Each Bitcoin transaction requested by a Coinbase customer is broadcasted a single on-chain transaction. Starting today, Coinbase will be bundling multiple sends into a single transaction. The new update requires no action from customers, who will immediately see reduced network fees.

A single transaction that fulfills requests sent by multiple users occupies less space in each block than each being processed individually.

Bitcoin transaction batching will be applied to both Coinbase and Coinbase Pro platforms. However, Coinbase Pro customers will see no noticeable changes to the experience as 100% of network fees are already covered.

The new feature will lead to a small delay in a transaction being broadcast to the network, but will not impact the time it takes for transactions to be confirmed at the normal rate for customers.

This is expected to improve usability of Bitcoin's open protocol, as a major obstacle for Bitcoin usability is scalability, or the rate at which the network is capable of processing transactions.

All Bitcoin transactions are required to pay a network fee, or a processing fee. However, users pay an average network fee for a single transaction of over $30 during periods of high activity on the network as Bitcoin users compete to outbid each other via network transaction fees.

Currently, daily median network fees on the Bitcoin network are approximately $0.30 for a transaction. Batching will help make Bitcoin more usable by lowering overall network fees and freeing up space on the blockchain, which will in turn increase transaction throughput, and helps to increase scalability.

Coinbase recently enabled support for users of their wallets to send cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin using short user-friendly addresses instead of traditional long hexadecimal addresses. Every Coinbase Wallet user has a small and simple username.

Coinbase also recently became the first pure-play crypto company to be approved as a Visa principal member. This membership will enable Coinbase to issue Visa debit cards known as "Coinbase Card" directly without depending on third-party issuers. This will enable customers to spend their crypto balances direct from their Coinbase account.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Article written by an RTT News Staff Writer, and posted on the RTT News.com website.

Article reposted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe

Internet Users Can Now Feed a Sheep in Real-Time Using Crypto

By Zachary   Posted on 15/03/2020   3 Min read

• For just 50 cents worth of crypto internet users can now feed a sheep in real-time

Twitch user Tanglesheep has launched an ingenious crypto business, where Twitch viewers can send USD 0.50 of cryptocurrency, which will then instantly dispense alfalfa pellets to a sheep in real-time, which can be watched on a video stream. The sheep can be fed 100 times per day maximum, so Tanglesheep may be earning USD 50 per day from this enterprise, in addition to the sheep being very well fed.

Tanglesheep accepts Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin, IOTA, and Bitcoin Cash. Although this concept seems really simple, it actually really exemplifies the power of cryptocurrency. Internet users can send crypto to instantly feed a sheep, even if they are on the other side of the world, and then watch that sheep eat in real-time.

This sheep crypto experiment can be thought of as a proof of concept. It is clear that other clever crypto businesses could be launched, where internet users will pay a small amount of crypto to see actions in real-time on video feeds.

BitcoinNews.com is committed to unbiased news and upholding journalistic codes of ethics. For more information please read our Editorial Policy here.

Image Courtesy: Pixabay

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The original article written by Zachary and posted on BitcoinNews.com.

Article reposted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe