The integrity of cryptocurrency trading volume is of growing importance for many stakeholders in the cryptoeconomy. Now, another service with big cryptoverse backers has arrived to further actualize “transparent data infrastructure” in the space.
On August 27th, cryptocurrency data company Nomics unveiled its new so-called Transparency Volume service, which the startup hailed as the first time a cryptocurrency market aggregator site “has designated a percentage of trading volume for a given cryptoasset as “transparent.”
As the firm explained in its announcement, its process for arriving at what volume data is considered reliable involves relying on cryptocurrency exchanges that provide high-quality data:
“Transparent volume represents the amount of volume deemed ‘trustworthy’ and high quality by Nomics. ‘Transparent Volume’ might just as well be called ‘Trustworthy Volume’ […] Specifically, transparent volume is the amount of volume for a given cryptoasset that’s moving through transparent exchanges (i.e. exchanges to which we’ve awarded an A+, A, or A- transparency rating).”
Nomics, which counts ecosystem stalwarts like Coinbase Ventures, Polymath Network, and Digital Currency Group among its investors, said the new service offering was considerably influenced by Bitwise Investments’s springtime report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
That Bitwise report made waves in the space for asserting that approximately “95% of reported volume [to data aggregators] is fake,” suggesting many smaller cryptocurrency exchanges are not trustworthy.
Some Takeaways from Transparency Volume on Day One
At launch, the new Nomics dashboard service indicated that the largest big-cap cryptocurrencies with the most transparent trading volume over the last 24 hours were BNB (33 percent), bitcoin (17 percent), Monero (15 percent), XRP (11 percent).
Less transparent among the top coins were litecoin (9 percent), EOS (8 percent), ether (7 percent), USDT (5 percent), and bitcoin cash (2 percent), according to the service.
Nomics suggested in their announcement that honing in on this kind of data could eventually help pave the way to the SEC approving a Bitcoin ETF in the United States:
“One of the SEC’s major concerns in approving a Bitcoin ETF is the percentage of trading volume that is unsurveilled and subject to manipulation, toxic influences, etc. Our transparent volume metric is intended to help institutions, state actors, and investors assess the percentage of reported trading volume for a given cryptoasset that is auditable and transparent.”
At press time, the cryptocurrency gave “A” transparency ratings to many of the space’s most recognizable trading platforms, including Binance, Coinbase Pro, Kraken, Bitstamp, Poloniex, Ethfinex, Gemini, and bitFlyer. Some of the firm’s “A+” platform’s included Deribit, IDEX, and Belfrics.
Toward Better Knowledge
Some take cryptocurrency data at face value, but new understandings can be unlocked by approaching the data in different ways.
For example, the bitcoin dominance rate — the amount of the cryptoeconomy’s market cap that bitcoin (BTC) alone is responsible for — is currently hovering around 70 percent, according to most data aggregator sites.
But there might be a better way to compute that metric. For one, blockchain analytics firm Arcane Crypto recently released a report that the suggested the bitcoin dominance rate was actually above 90 percent in weighting all cryptocurrencies’ market caps against their trading volumes.
Another example is emphasizing “realized cap” stats instead of straightforward market cap data. As Coin Metrics’s Nic Carter has previously explained, the realized cap of bitcoin “roughly … measures the average cost basis of Bitcoin holders.” Notably, the original cryptocurrency’s realized cap just crossed the $100 billion USD mark.
Realized cap roughly (but not perfectly) measures the average cost basis of Bitcoin holders. It takes into account the price at which a given coin last changed hands (rather than treating them uniformly, as market cap does) https://t.co/lm2QDGoYsd
— nic ???? carter (@nic__carter) August 26, 2019
In a similar way, the aforementioned Nomics approaches the traditional metric of cryptocurrency trading volume in a new way so as to provide a more accurate depiction of the activity that is actually occurring.
Going forward, it seems likely that better data clarity could increasingly assuage regulators’ concerns toward the ecosystem.
