A quarterly ratings report has upgraded the score previously given to seven cryptocurrency exchanges, while downgrading four. It has also added seven new exchanges, rating them on such metrics as trading volume, security, and compliance. In related news, Crypto Exchange Ranks (CER) has begun tracking the hot and cold wallets of exchanges as part of a drive to champion greater transparency.
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Okex Downgraded, Bithumb Upgraded
Cryptocurrency exchange ratings, much like cryptocurrency ratings, are highly subjective. Any attempt at rating and ranking the constituents of a particular set using specific benchmarks is bound to cause controversy. Nevertheless, quarterly ratings reports continue to grow in popularity and in number while shining the spotlight on various verticals within the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Tokeninsight’s latest report tracks the progress of crypto exchanges over the past three months, amid difficult market conditions.
Unique visitors have dropped across the board during the last quarter, with the sole exception of Bithumb, whose traffic and aggregated score has risen. Okex, by way of comparison, has seen its weighted score fall, exacerbated by the fact that it “has repeatedly unilaterally changed its trading rules during our rating period, including data rollbacks and modifying its contract delivery rules.” The report continued:
In the case of the BCH hard fork, Okex delivered the last transaction price of BCH contract ahead of schedule at 16:05 p.m. on November 14, 2018 (GMT+8), and issued an announcement only one hour in advance, causing unnecessary losses to a large number of investors.
Hitbtc, Kraken, and Kucoin all saw their ratings upgraded by Tokeninsight, while Poloniex and Gemini were among the exchanges given ratings for the first time.
Trans-Fee Mining Exchanges Score Poorly
Transaction fee mining exchanges, often linked with wash trading and fake volume, have scored poorly in Tokeninsight’s report. Hong Kong’s Fcoin exchange is one such casualty, its score lowered, with the report noting how “Transaction mining trends once brought a large amount of traffic to the platform, due to the notion that the vast majority of transactions of transaction fees or dividends were free, and transaction volume has dropped significantly in the past three months. In terms of compliance, Fcoin has lagged behind in development and has not obtained any license of relevant regulatory agencies.”
Exchange analytics service Crypto Exchange Ranks has been instrumental in uncovering fake volume on Asian platforms such as Fcoin, Coinbit, and GDAC. Its latest initiative involves launching a crowdsourced framework for crypto exchange transparency. CER is seeking the help of “transparency hackers” to help it identify and then track the hot and cold wallets of all leading cryptocurrency exchanges.
The CER dashboard is already populated with wallet balances for several major exchanges. Results can be filtered according to the size of the exchange wallet, and clicking on the wallet balance will reveal the distribution between hot and cold wallets, where such information is available. Eventually, CER hopes to add this data for every exchange, and in doing so to bring greater transparency to the sector through a combination of self-reporting and public diligence.
Do you think ratings reports incentivize exchanges to provide greater transparency and to act ethically? Let us know in the comments section below.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Tokeninsight, and CER.
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