How did it fall out that the most BTC trading volume is a fake?

Hands up, anyone who is surprised that a little-known crypto exchange that apparently had the largest bitcoin trading volume on CoinMarketCap has been exposed as a wash trading scam platform. In the world of crypto where apparently everyone made it to Lamboland during the 2017 bull run, and absolutely everybody knew when to sell, no one will admit that they have been played. Since Bitwise published its investigation two days ago showing that at least 95 percent of all bitcoin trading volume is faked on unregulated exchanges, the standard refrain has been “Everyone already knew that.”

To admit otherwise would be to admit that one is a “noob” and possibly a “bagholder,” but the fact that platforms like CoinBene continue to exist and perpetrate what should be a transparent scam is indicative of a deeper problem within crypto. For whatever reason, otherwise sensible and rational investors seem to have internalized the idea that crypto “does not operate on conventional rules” and as such, it is OK to ignore what their experience or good sense tells them.

Despite CoinBene clearly being a no-name platform compared to the likes of Binance or Kraken, some clearly fell victim to a story that should have been very easy to spot as “too good to be true.” This is unfortunately all too common in the world of crypto, where common sense and Economics are often overlooked out of an irrational sense of optimism.

At the height of the 2017 bull run, for instance, it was not uncommon to see ICO whitepapers promising “at least 500% profit upon listing.” Others guaranteed that token prices would spike as much as 2000 percent and stay there because the ICO promoters would buy back a large portion of the tokens and create artificial scarcity. Ridiculous as these promises look in hindsight, many such projects raised millions of dollars, effectively preying on the naivety of crypto investors.

Most of Bitcoin’s Trading Volume is FAKE: Time to Wake the F*** Up?, CCN, Mar 27