Crypto Analytics Firm Messari Introduces New Exchange Index Following Fake Volume Reports

Cryptocurrency analytics firm Messari has added a new index for 10 cryptocurrency exchanges, the company announced in a blog post on March 26.

Messari launched a new product dubbed “Real 10 Volumes” on its OnChainFX dashboard to limit its default volume calculations to the chosen exchanges. The “Real 10” trading platforms include Binance, Bitfinex, Bitflyer, Bitstamp, Bittrex, Coinbase Pro, Gemini, itBit, Kraken, and Poloniex.

In the post, Messari said that the aforementioned exchanges reported “significant and legitimate trading volumes via their APIs [application programming interface].” The company further revealed that in the coming months it will add other exchanges, adding clean book data to their data feeds.

Messari’s attention to “significant and legitimate” volumes follows a report from major cryptocurrency index fund provider Bitwise Asset Management, which stated that 95 percent of volume on unregulated exchanges appears to be fake or non-economic in nature.

“Under the hood the exchanges that report the highest volumes are unrecognizable. The vast majority of this reported volume is fake and/or non-economic wash trading,” the report read.

A separate report from The Tie came to similar conclusions, finding that nearly 90 percent of cryptocurrency exchanges’ reported trade volumes may be incorrect. The Tie said that 87 percent of the analyzed trading platforms’ reported trading volume was potentially suspicious.

Following Bitwise’s report, cryptocurrency market data resource CoinMarketCap (CMC) promised to recalculate how it ranks member exchanges. CMC executives wrote on Twitter:

“We are listening to all our users' feedback, and we are working hard to add a suite of new metrics so users can get a fuller picture of exchanges and crypto on the site.”