2 CommentsThe Bitcoin exchange OKCoin, considered the second largest Chinese crypto-platform in volume after BtcChina, is being accused of faking its trading volume data. The suspicion comes after the People’s Bank of China recently decided to forbid all connections between cryptocurrency and the country’s banks, as well as third-party payment services.
Despite the fact that OKCoin had to suspend its activity, the exchange trading volume remained strangely high, even while Bitcoiners sold the content of their wallets and the buyers couldn’t make deposits in their accounts, Coindesk reports.
Although the exchange wasn’t operating, its numbers were stable, achieving the same levels as Huobi.com, the Chinese exchange that skirted the ban. In this case, the exchange’s CEO allowed the traders to transfer money into his own personal bank account.
The first person to notice the strange numbers was a Bitcoiner, known as Shi Diaomao, who makes a profit by trading cryptocurrency and exploring the rates in different platforms. He found the numbers revealed by OKCoin rather strange and published the information in a social network for investors.
In a two-hour period on 19th December, OKCoin’s data indicated that over 30,000 BTC were traded, but Shi concluded that the real volume could be of just one tenth of that. The trader tried to contact the exchange, but was left without an explanation. The only reaction he got was the sudden volume plunge at OKCoin, almost like the company knew it had been caught.
In the meantime, OKCoin’s CEO, Xu Mingxing, released a statement, explaining the situation. According to the representative, the discrepancy can be justified because the company allowed large traders to trade through its API and not via its webpage interface. However, lot of big Bitcoiners in China are still not buying the CEO’s explanation.
