News Bitcoin SV Volume is Heavily Manipulated, Data Finds

Timothy Peterson, CFA at Cane Island Alternative Advisors, tweeted about Coinmetrics’ recent findings on Bitcoin SV (BSV) transactions, which show extremely high levels of wash trading.

Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision, or Bitcoin Scam Version?

Bitcoin SV, the cryptocurrency led by self-proclaimed Satoshi, Craig Wright, seems to have heavily manipulated transaction data, according to a report by Coinmetrics. Bitcoin SV has been controversial since its inception, not only because it was created as a contentious fork which caused a messy split of the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) blockchain, but also because of the involvement of Craig Wright and Calvin Ayer with the project.

Looking at the data, Timothy Peterson noted that the average transaction amount on the BSV chain is smaller than 1/10th of a cent. Furthermore, the network currently reports that it handles around 700,000 transactions of these extremely small transactions each day.

(1/2) The median (middle) transaction value for $BSV is less than 1/10 of one cent. This is an economically meaningless value. Txns have soared to 700k/day, meaning there are hundreds of thousands of fractional cent txns being processed daily…. pic.twitter.com/URIEYZBWSz — Timothy Peterson (@nsquaredcrypto) January 31, 2020

This can lead to only two conclusions, either BSV is being used to process almost a million micro-payments every day, which eclipses the volume of the Lightning Network, or the volume is being spoofed by trading bots to fake activity. Seeing that there are only 40,652 active BSV wallet addresses, it’s highly unlikely that these transactions are genuine.

(2/2) Only explanation is automated wash trades to inflate $BSV stats and pump price. This is what price manipulation looks like. Data: @coinmetrics.

cc: @Bitfinexed — Timothy Peterson (@nsquaredcrypto) January 31, 2020

Do People Even Use BSV?

Craig Wright has claimed to be the anonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, for years but has been called out many times. He has been unable to provide conclusive proof to substantiate his claims, and much of the proof he has provided has been completely discredited.

Confirmed: Craig Wright doesn’t have keys to $8 billion of Bitcoin (via @decryptmedia) https://t.co/orkv9yNsjd — Dan Hedl (@danheld) January 17, 2020

With new data hinting that transactions are being faked on the BSV chain, it calls into question just how much usage the chain actually has, if any at all. Most of the onchain transactions on BSV come from a single weather app, with as much of 96% of transactions being from this one app.

Bitcoin SV claims to have a lot of different apps, but it seems that only the weather app is being used at all. Even the weather app’s purported usage is spurious, detractors say it’s just taking data from a weather data site and writing it on the BSV blockchain. It’s not that Bitcoin SV users are obsessed with the weather, and using the app constantly to check the forecast.

Yes I agree BSV can be useful as a kind of minimum level of intelligence test. But I think you are one of those that failed it😁 — Andrea Chiavazza🇪🇺🇵🇸🇮🇷 (@ndrchvzz) November 24, 2019

Bitcoin SV has been jokingly called an intelligence test by the rest of the crypto community because of the poor reputations of its main supporters, the controversy surrounding Craig Wright’s claims to be the creator of Bitcoin, and because of the strange data surrounding BSV transactions.

Do you think BSV is spoofing it’s transaction data? Let us know in the comments!



Images via Shutterstock, Twitter @ndrchvzz @danheld @nsquaredcrypto, charts by Coinmetrics