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The key question for me now is: once you subtract all the plainly unethical transfers, securities-laws-runarounds, pump and dumps, and wash trading, how much o

The key question for me now is: once you subtract all the plainly unethical transfers, securities-laws-runarounds, pump and dumps, and wash trading, how much of a business is left? Secondarily, is that ‘total remaining market cap’ larger or smaller than the total value of VC funding in the ecosystem?

seydor 3y ago
Binance had 4.17 trillion trading volume in the past 7 days
- cowpig 3y ago
  I could generate $4.17 trillion in trading volume with myself if the cost of a transaction is updating a row in a database. This statistic doesn't mean anything in isolation
  - dymk 3y ago
    Well, to everybody else, trading volume means between different entities, so your loophole probably isn't all that relevant
    - Detrytus 3y ago
      What if you own both entities? And you also own an exchange where the trading happens, so you give them both special Black Friday deal: 0 transaction cost for the next 12 months.
    - Forgeties79 3y ago
      I don’t really mess with crypto anymore, but back when I did, literally every transaction I ever made was with myself. I literally never spent any on a good or service.
  - artursapek 3y ago
    What you're describing is called wash trading.
    - 1270018080 3y ago
      Which was 99.9% of the NFT market. I wonder how much of it is the crypto market. Probably not much lower.
- MikeDelta 3y ago
  I read that exchanges inflate these numbers in different ways, so it can be very misleading. Apparently sometimes this goes very wrong [0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36610006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36610006
- killingtime74 3y ago
  If you and me traded 1 dollar between us 4.17 trillion times (all electronic, we could probably do more), we would have the same trading volume.
- jahnu 3y ago
  And what part of the economy did that facilitate?
- evdubs 3y ago
  The SEC lawsuit, which alleges (among other things) Binance as having lots of wash trading on their platform, still hasn't been resolved. Using statistical methods, for BTC, ETH, LTC, and XRP, Binance wash trading was estimated at >50%. https://www.nber.org/papers/w30783 https://www.nber.org/papers/w30783 You can see other pairs on Binance that are clearly more. For example, GAS is the 9th "most traded" token on Binance. It claims ~$100M in daily volume, but there's not even $1M in liquidity between +/- 2% of spot. That is almost certainly all wash trading. https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges/binance https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges/binance Binance volume numbers are not believable.
- infecto 3y ago
  Trading volume should not be confused with real transactions.
TacticalCoder 3y ago
> ... once you subtract all the plainly unethical transfers, securities-laws-runarounds, pump and dumps, and wash trading, how much of a business is left? Coinbase, a HN unicorn, probably knows? Their KYC/AML is top notch (which is a PITA for honest people btw). They know how many USD actually entered and whom send them. They may have had insiders accused of pump and dumping but AFAIK Coinbase hasn't been accused of pump and dump. Coinbase has now been chosen by BlackRock to keep the Bitcoin backing the BlackRock ETF in custody: I take it if Bitcoin ETFs are accepted, and if BlackRock and Amundi and I don't now who else start launching Bitcoin ETF, we may begin to see what's left? Someone else who may know: that weird dude who is behind MSTR: he basically bought 158 000 Bitcoins at an average price of $29 K USD and he plans to buy much more. (if you want to long or short Bitcoin, you can do so on the MSTR stock for it basically follows the ups and downs of Bitcoin). What's left, for all we know, could be much more than what's already in (I've got no crystall ball though). The one thing that I'm sure of is that it's not all fraudulent. For example an estimated 25% of all people in argentina have cryptocurrencies: I doubt one person out of every four there is a criminal!? Switzerland: if there's one country where its citizens really don't strike me as criminals it's Switzerland. 20%+ people owning cryptocurrencies there. I can understand the "there are no use cases besides speculation" argument. But I cannot understand the "all the people using cryptocurrencies are criminal" one. When you've got several countries in the world where at least one out of every five person did at least try cryptocurrencies, there is something.
baobabKoodaa 3y ago
You're confusing trading volume with market cap. These are different things.

seydor 3y ago

Binance had 4.17 trillion trading volume in the past 7 days

cowpig 3y ago
I could generate $4.17 trillion in trading volume with myself if the cost of a transaction is updating a row in a database. This statistic doesn't mean anything in isolation
- dymk 3y ago
  Well, to everybody else, trading volume means between different entities, so your loophole probably isn't all that relevant
  - Detrytus 3y ago
    What if you own both entities? And you also own an exchange where the trading happens, so you give them both special Black Friday deal: 0 transaction cost for the next 12 months.
  - Forgeties79 3y ago
    I don’t really mess with crypto anymore, but back when I did, literally every transaction I ever made was with myself. I literally never spent any on a good or service.
- artursapek 3y ago
  What you're describing is called wash trading.
  - 1270018080 3y ago
    Which was 99.9% of the NFT market. I wonder how much of it is the crypto market. Probably not much lower.
MikeDelta 3y ago
I read that exchanges inflate these numbers in different ways, so it can be very misleading. Apparently sometimes this goes very wrong [0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36610006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36610006
killingtime74 3y ago
If you and me traded 1 dollar between us 4.17 trillion times (all electronic, we could probably do more), we would have the same trading volume.
jahnu 3y ago
And what part of the economy did that facilitate?
evdubs 3y ago
The SEC lawsuit, which alleges (among other things) Binance as having lots of wash trading on their platform, still hasn't been resolved. Using statistical methods, for BTC, ETH, LTC, and XRP, Binance wash trading was estimated at >50%. https://www.nber.org/papers/w30783 https://www.nber.org/papers/w30783 You can see other pairs on Binance that are clearly more. For example, GAS is the 9th "most traded" token on Binance. It claims ~$100M in daily volume, but there's not even $1M in liquidity between +/- 2% of spot. That is almost certainly all wash trading. https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges/binance https://www.coingecko.com/en/exchanges/binance Binance volume numbers are not believable.
infecto 3y ago
Trading volume should not be confused with real transactions.

TacticalCoder 3y ago

> ... once you subtract all the plainly unethical transfers, securities-laws-runarounds, pump and dumps, and wash trading, how much of a business is left? Coinbase, a HN unicorn, probably knows? Their KYC/AML is top notch (which is a PITA for honest people btw). They know how many USD actually entered and whom send them. They may have had insiders accused of pump and dumping but AFAIK Coinbase hasn't been accused of pump and dump. Coinbase has now been chosen by BlackRock to keep the Bitcoin backing the BlackRock ETF in custody: I take it if Bitcoin ETFs are accepted, and if BlackRock and Amundi and I don't now who else start launching Bitcoin ETF, we may begin to see what's left? Someone else who may know: that weird dude who is behind MSTR: he basically bought 158 000 Bitcoins at an average price of $29 K USD and he plans to buy much more. (if you want to long or short Bitcoin, you can do so on the MSTR stock for it basically follows the ups and downs of Bitcoin). What's left, for all we know, could be much more than what's already in (I've got no crystall ball though). The one thing that I'm sure of is that it's not all fraudulent. For example an estimated 25% of all people in argentina have cryptocurrencies: I doubt one person out of every four there is a criminal!? Switzerland: if there's one country where its citizens really don't strike me as criminals it's Switzerland. 20%+ people owning cryptocurrencies there. I can understand the "there are no use cases besides speculation" argument. But I cannot understand the "all the people using cryptocurrencies are criminal" one. When you've got several countries in the world where at least one out of every five person did at least try cryptocurrencies, there is something.

baobabKoodaa 3y ago

You're confusing trading volume with market cap. These are different things.