Tag Archive for: Cryptocurrency Liquidity

Independent initiatives that analyze crypto exchanges liquidity and quality

Volume is flawed metric of crypto exchanges liquidity. Because of wash trading practices of many crypto exchanges as well as token issuers, using trading volume as a basis of comparison is misleading. Many exchanges have problems attracting professional market makers and are trying to make shortcuts on the way to attract retail investors. Moreover attracting professional investors requires investments in crypto exchanges system development with stable and performant APIs so they could connect their algorithmic trading systems.]

There are more and more independent initiatives that are taking a closer look at what constitutes a high quality crypto exchange. Three major ones are Blockchain Transparency Institute, CryptoCompare Benchmark and Cointelligence Report. I also take a quick look at the Bitwise report for SEC from March 2019.

 

 

Blockchain Transparency Institute

BTI concentrates on analyzing crypto exchanges data feeds to spot wash trading mechanisms and provide the real volume metric which is cleaned out of suspicious activities.

BTI identified 17 of the CoinMarketCap Top 25 crypto exchanges to be over 99% wash traded. This one number alone shows the magnitude of the problem, as well as how volume is a false measure.

According to BTI Report crypto exchanges which are faking their volumes use a variety of different tactics to try and swindle investors. These tactics include buying twitter followers and likes, filling up fake order books, mirror wash trading the largest exchanges with real volume, and trying to disguise their wash trading using various bot settings to not affect price. On many of these exchanges trading high volumes closing the spread would make the volume plummet as the trading bots had no room to wash trade with themselves. Welcome to the wild wild west of no regulation and surveillance.

BTI finds that “all crypto exchanges combined are currently reporting around $50 Billion in daily volume on CMC. After removing all the wash traded volume via our algorithms the accurate number is around $4-5 Billion. About 88-92% of daily trading volume is fabricated depending on the day. Bitcoin’s daily trading volume is about 92% fabricated, which is in line with the space as a whole when comparing our findings to top data sites reporting wash traded volumes.” 

And further “On our list of the top 40 largest exchanges with actual volume, Bitcoin’s volume is about 65% fabricated. Almost all of this fabricated volume comes from OKEx, Bibox, HitBTC, and Huobi. Of the top 25 tokens by market cap, Tron and Ethereum Classic are the highest wash traded tokens on our list at 85% fake volume each and coming in at #24 and #25 of the most wash traded tokens.”

Top 10 cryptocurrency exchanges according to real (not wash traded) volume by BTI

  1. Binance 
  2. Kucoin
  3. Liquid
  4. Huobi
  5. Coinbase
  6. OKEx
  7. Bitfinex
  8. Upbit
  9. Kraken
  10. Bitstamp

CryptoCompare

CryptoCompare’s Exchange Ranking methodology utilises a combination of 34 qualitative and quantitative metrics to assign a grade to over 100 active crypto exchanges. Metrics were categorised into several buckets ensuring that no one metric overly influences the overall exchange ranking. Each crypto exchange grade is derived from a broad due diligence check using qualitative data, followed by a market quality analysis that uses a combination of order book and transactional data.

Due diligence check comprises of 6 main categories that attempt to qualitatively rate each exchange on the basis of:

  • Geography
  • Legal and regulatory metrics
  • Calibre of investment
  • Team and company quality
  • Quality of data provision
  • Trade surveillance

Although at Empirica we believe in numbers, I like the qualitative approach, as it’s also possible to prove a correlation of metric like number of employees and business size of the exchange, therefore proving this way it’s quality. 

Another important factor is Market Quality. Crypto compare measures the market quality of each exchange using a combination of 5 metrics (derived from trade and order book data) that aim to measure the:

  • Cost to trade, 
  • Liquidity, 
  • Market stability, 
  • Behaviour towards sentiment
  • “Natural” trading behaviour

Exchanges were rated based on a combination of 9 of the most liquid BTC and ETH markets.

It’s worth taking a closer look how CryptoCompare report approaches Spread and Liquidity metrics:

“Generally, those exchanges which offer incentives to provide liquidity through either low or negative maker fees will achieve the tightest spreads. Due to the spread being calculated using the best bid and offer, it is misleading to use it as a sole gauge of liquidity and therefore as the market cost to trade; it must be used in conjunction with a depth

measurement to find the likely transaction price for any given size of transaction.”

 

Good point. And liquidity:

“Market depth is the total volume of orders in the order book. It provides an idea of how much it is possible to trade on crypto exchange, and how much the price is likely to move if large amounts are traded. An exchange with greater average depth is likely to be more stable (i.e flash crashes are much less likely) and allows trading of greater amounts at better prices.

We consider the depth up to 1% either side of the mid price. 

Depth = E(depthUp+depthDown)/2

Where depthUp is the total volume that would be required to move the price by 1% upwards from the mid price, and

depthDown is the total volume that would be required to move the price by 1% downwards from the mid price.”

 

Top 10 crypto exchanges according CryptoCompare quality benchmark:

  1. Coinbase 
  2. Poloniex 
  3. Bitstamp 
  4. bitFlyer 
  5. Liquid
  6.  itBit 
  7. Kraken 
  8. Binance 
  9. Gemini 
  10. Bithumb 

 

Cointelligence Rating System

Cointelligence is the most qualitative rating of crypto exchanges from the above. The methodology of the team was to manaully open accounts on all analyzed crypto exchanges and check from the user perspective the core aspects of beeing an exchange customer. The aspects cover:

Usability – covers KYC process, the quality of exchange website, extent of features and how easy it is to get a human answer from support staff. 

Performance – functionalities and historical robustness of exchange matching engine, fees height, trading instruments like futures contracts and margin trading.

Team – analysis of the available information about management team behind the crypto exchange, especially business and technical experience of C-level staff, including person responsible for exchange’s security

Risk – information on past hacks, insurance status, account security layers but also regulatory status of cryptocurrency exchange. Based on the geographical location of the exchange headquarters and registration any potential run-ins with the local law or any sign of authorities involvement.

 

This way Contelligence analyzed 85 crypto exchanges, but only 15 is rated with good quality mark, lead by Liquid and Gemini. 

Top 10 cryptocurrency exchanges by Cointelligence by qualitative criteria 

  1. Liquid (Quoine)
  2. Gemini
  3. Binance
  4. Bitstamp
  5. Gibraltar Blockchain Exchange
  6. OKEx
  7. Bittrex
  8. itBit
  9. Kraken
  10. ABCC

Bitwise report for SEC

Bitwise analysis is based on detecting wash trading patterns in public marked data published by crypto exchanges. Out of 81 exchanges they have analyzed in March 2019 only 10 were identified as be free of wash trading practices. These exchanges are:

  1. Binance
  2. Bitfinex
  3. Kraken
  4. Bitstamp
  5. Coinbase
  6. bitFlyer
  7. Gemini
  8. itBit
  9. Bitrex
  10. Poloniex

Bitwise identified that only 4,5% (about $275M daily) of officially reported volume (eg by the public sources like coinmarketcap) is the actual volume. The rest is wash traded.

The Bitcoin market is more orderly and efficient than is commonly understood. The 10 exchanges trade as a uniform, highly connected market. They form a singular price. Average deviations from the aggregate price for the ten exchanges is well within the expected arbitrage band when you account for exchange-level fees (~30 basis points), volatility and hedging costs. Arbitrage is operating well. Sustained deviations (defined as deviations >1% that last more than 100 seconds) appear as single white lines on the graph below. The graph demonstrates that the ten exchanges trade at a single unified price.

So although the message about the amount of wash traded volume is alarming, the report shows that the real crypto market is quite concentrated, ordered, efficient and well performing. The rest is just noise.

 

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Introduction to Liquidity Metrics

This paper offers a summary of indicators which may be used to demonstrate and examine liquidity developments in financial markets. These measures are employed in foreign markets, currency, and capital markets to exemplify their usefulness. Lots of measures have to be considered since there isn’t any single theoretically appropriate and approved measure to ascertain a market’s level of liquidity and since market-specific variables and peculiarities have to be considered.

Read more about our tool for monitoring crypto exchange liquidity with Liquidity Analytics Dashboard

Liquid markets are perceived as desired due to the advantages they supply, such as allocation and data efficiency. The advantage might not be accurate for investors jointly. As Keynes noted (1936, p. 160):”For the simple fact that every individual investor selects himself that his devotion is”liquid” (although this cannot be accurate for many investors jointly ) calms his nerves and leaves him much more prepared to conduct a threat.” Consequently, recent crises in financial markets, particularly, have sparked research about the way to gauge the condition of market liquidity and to better forecast and protect against liquidity crises.

This paper has two functions. It offers a summary of numerous distinct theories associated with liquid financial markets.

Analysts motivated this job. Like Borio (2000), who reports that at the run-up to financial disasters, markets frequently seem unnaturally liquid, but through times of anxiety, liquidity will vanish.

Market participants comprehend a financial advantage liquid, should they can sell considerable quantities of the advantage without impacting its price. Liquid financial assets are characterized by having trade costs; simple timely and trading payoff; and trades with limited effect on the market price. The significance of a few of the qualities of liquid markets can alter over time. During times of equilibrium, for example, the perception of the asset’s liquidity could reflect trade costs. During times of anxiety and principles that are changing, instantaneous price detection and adjustment to a new balance becomes more significant.

Liquid markets often display five attributes:

  • tightness
  • immediacy
  • depth
  • breadth
  • resiliency

Tightness refers to trade costs, like the gap between buy and sell prices, such as the bid-ask spreads in markets, as well as costs. Immediacy signifies the rate with which orders could be implemented and, within this context too, settled, and consequently reflects, among other items, the efficacy of their trading, clearing, and settlement systems. Breadth implies that orders are big and numerous in bulk with minimal effect on prices. Resiliency is a feature of markets in which orders flow to fix order imbalances, which are inclined to move prices away from what fundamentals warrant. Depth refers to the existence of abundant orders, either actual or easily uncovered of potential buyers and sellers, both above and below the price at which a security now trades. 

These conditions reflect various measurements of the degree to which an asset immediately and with no costs can be changed into legal tender.

In these conditions are to some degree overlapping. The majority of the available data do not correspond with those measurements, which disrupts their measurement. A variety of aspects have to be considered, because they influence the measurements of liquidity. They vary in the microstructure of this market, the bank’s implementation of its policy.

Knowing the microstructure of this market is crucial, when proxies, such as bid-ask spreads and turnover ratios, are utilized as liquidity signs. A market may be a platform which enables sellers and buyers to interact, a physical place. Professors have a world in your mind using a Walrasian auctioneer performing a price tätonnement procedure ensuring trading in market clearing prices. In summary, prices are a statistic. In the professional’s world, however, trading can occur in a variety of platforms (as an example, trader or auction markets) in non market clearing prices due to factors like market illiquidity.

It is contended that traders offer liquidity, because they offer a market. But because traders usually attempt to square their positions maintain a predetermined structural position prior to the close of the day they just “supply” liquidity by taking stock positions provided that they presume sellers and buyers will continue to emerge. In an auction market, sellers and prospective buyers distribute orders, and a digital system or agents will suit them. Auction markets are order or price could be continuous if there are trades and driven. Market intermediaries in auction systems can additionally take stock rankings in order to ease liquidity (e.g., so-called experts in broadly traded securities). Trading systems make it possible for participants to submit limit-orders, which enhance the liquidity. The intermediaries having access to the trading strategies can cover their costs by charging a commission or else they quote ask and bid prices to be paid by the sellers and buyers.

A distinction is made between the market, in which problems are offered, and also the market, where individuals who’ve Purchased the problems at the market can resell them. The market consequently provides liquidity.

It’s very important to comprehend the reporting demands of trades in markets prior to trading volumes may be utilized as a liquidity index.

An advantage is liquid if it can be converted to legal tender, which each definition is liquid. Some financial statements, such as require deposits, are almost perfectly liquid–provided that the credit institution is liquid as they may be converted without cost or delay to cash during regular conditions, while the conversion of different claims to legal tender can involve agents’ commissions, settlement delays, etc.. The emphasis is on trade costs and immediacy. It’s regarding the ease by which, in the lack of info changing an asset’s fundamental price quantities of this asset could be disposed of quickly at a sensible price.

A financial market’s liquidity is dependent upon the substitutability among the assets traded in a market, and the way liquid every one of those assets are. Whether there are issuers in the bond markets and equities markets, credit risk could protect against substitutability and result in segmentation of this market. Regardless of having the exact same issuer, human assets might nevertheless have distinct attributes, for example different maturities on the market for government securities, distinct voting rights for preference stocks, etc.. This aggregation problem leaves difficult an effort to employ measures with the goal of measuring a market’s liquidity.

This paper explains measures to judge an asset’s market liquidity with a view to evaluate whether a financial market, or in minimum a few of its sections, can be distinguished as liquid.

Our next article will classify liquidity measures in line with this size they greatest measure. Additionally, it discusses factors that might impact capability and their interpretation to catch a specified facet of liquidity. Issues related to assemble the measures will be also discussed. Section Ill uses the liquidity measures to the market, currency, and capital markets of a group of nations. Section IV lists a few of the qualitative aspects that are important to look at when assessing the liquidity measures across markets and states. Section V notes liquidity measures during times of stress may vary.

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