Through various tweets, TokenAnalyst has been publishing its estimations for the 24-hour on-chain BTC flows for five major exchanges – Binance, Bitstamp, Poloniex, Bittrex and BitMEX.
While the majority of the exchanges documented have been seeing relative parity between BTC inflows and outflows, with Binance hosting inflows of $58 million and outflows of $54 million, Bitstamp seeing inflows of $52 million and outflows of $50 million, Poloniex receiving inflows of $6 million and outflows of $4 million, and Bittrex amassing inflows of $4 million and outflows of $5 million, BitMEX hosted an inflow of $12 million and an outflow of $85 million on July 20.
Today, BitMEX saw $4 million enter the exchange, and $14 million leave. While most other exchanges had relative parity, Binance saw an additional $15 million in outflows.
🚨 24H BTC exchange on-chain flows:#binance: $34M in | $49M out#bitstamp: $21M in | $23M out#bittrex: $2M in | $4M out#poloniex: $785K in | $2M out#bitmex: $4M in | $14M out
See more at https://t.co/6AFFM1D63p
— TokenAnalyst (@thetokenanalyst) July 22, 2019
While the dramatic disparity between BitMEX’s BTC inflows and outflows appears anomalous, the exchange has seen outflows significantly outweigh inflows on several occasions during recent months.
In a tweet, prominent Twitter personality, WhalePanda, attributed the imbalance in capital flows to the complacency of many cryptocurrency traders concerning holding large sums of BTC on exchanges, posting:
It's a normal reaction, I wouldn't say this is panic leaving considering how much BTC they actually have on their platform.
It's more of a reminder for people who don't actively trade their entire stash to withdraw (some of) it.— WhalePanda (@WhalePanda) July 20, 2019
The 24-hour trade volume for BitMEX’s BTC contracts sits at $2.4 billion as of this writing.
Significant Outflow Disparity Follows News of CFTC Investigations
The imbalance between BitMEX’s inflows and outflows was highlighted followed reports asserting that the cryptocurrency derivatives exchange had come under investigation from the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on July 19.
The “months-long” probe is reportedly exploring whether or not BitMEX violated U.S. law by allowing U.S. citizens to trade on the platform, despite the exchange not being registered with the CFTC.
A BitMEX spokesperson stated: “HDR Global Trading Limited, owner of BitMEX, as a matter of company policy, does not comment on any media reports about inquiries or investigations by government agencies or regulators and we have no comment on this report.”
