The Blockchain Transparency Institute (BTI) has experienced a deadly DDoS attack on its website shortly after exposing various crypto exchanges that engage in wash trading to boost their volumes.
As of this writing, BTI website, including its wash trading reports, remains inaccessible, an indication that the attack is still ongoing. BTI is a regular publisher of investigative reports that expose the illicit activity in the crypto space. BTI took to twitter, explaining that their site went blank following OKEx response. OKEx is one of the exchanges accused of carrying out the volume-boosting activity.
Exposing Wash Trading Platforms
In May and September 2019, BTI issued reports that seem to rub various crypto exchanges in the wrong way. In the latest report on September, BTI claimed that its reports have helped to reduce the total volume of wash trading by up to 35 percent among the top 40 major crypto exchanges.
The aim of publishing the reports is to keep trading clean and make traders honest. Some of the cleanest exchanges, include Coinbase, Kraken, and Poloniex. These exchanges have no taint of wash trading.
Various exchanges have received the red mark as the worst offenders. They include OKEx, Bibox, and Bithumb. These trading platforms use illicit activity to boost their trading volume in order to attract customers.
Sometime this year, Bitwise sent a report to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) claiming that Bitcoin daily volume was only $272 million per day. This implies that up to 95% of the reported daily trade volume was inflated by volume-boosting strategies such as wash trading.
A Grey Area in Crypto Trading
In the crypto space, wash trading is an enshrouded grey area with no legal clarity. Following the Bitwise report, Huobi, which was named among the worst offenders, tendered an apology:
“We did identify a few of our market makers conducting what we suspect may have been wash trading for the sake of performance and marketing purposes. We have already communicated with these market makers and they have discontinued the strategies in question.”
So far, Huobi and other mentioned offenders have scaled down on the activity by updating their terms of use to prevent the practice on their platforms. However, OKEx decided to sternly defend itself, contesting all the allegations of wash trading on their website. In a recent tweet, OKEx CEO placed a 100 BTC bet to BTI, promising to prove that more than 10 percent of its trading volume is genuine.
Featured image: twitter.com