- WazirX is reported to clock ~50 BTC volume as per Coinmarketcap
- We compared WazirX order books during and after Binance Maintenance.
- An increase of 800% in liquidity was observed in WazirX’s BTC-USDT and ETH-USDT order books after Binance Maintenance was over.
I often receive tips from concerned users about exchanges faking volume, wash trading or manipulating prices. Now, I get angry mails from anonymous users like this one.
Regardless of the nature of email, we try our best to get to the bottom of all the information we receive. This is the second email I received with the same concern. The last one was in November, around Binance Maintenance time as well. Hence, it was worth doing a small screen comparison between few hours.
WazirX has just completed a year since launch. According to CoinMarketCap, WazirX trade volume is roughly ~50 BTC. But one thing that stands out in WazirX order books is the amount of any asset in open orders. Often times I have questioned the picture perfect order books of WazirX with exactly the same amount of asset orders across multiple prices such as this one from several months ago.
We have tried to directly and indirectly ask the exchange team to explain how this was possible but never received concrete answers. So, this was a good opportunity to put the emailer’s theory to test.
Contents
WazirX Orders during Binance Maintenance
Around 12:30 PM IST, 5 hours into Binance maintenance I opened WazirX and grabbed a few screenshots of BTC-USDT, ETH-USDT and XRP-USDT market. I selected the “Order Volume” tab for better visibility of Open Orders.
As you can see on the BTC-USDT order book there is slightly less than one BTC on the Buy side for price ranging between 3808 to 3838 USDT, while a little more than one BTC on the Sell side for price ranging between 3853 to 3909 USDT.
For ETH-USDT, there are ~7 ETH on Buy side for price ranging between 125.37 to 129.50 and ~16 ETH on the Sell side for price ranging between 133.55 and 138.5.
WazirX Orders Post Binance Maintenance
At 4:30 PM IST, a couple hours after Binance maintenance was over, I took some screenshots from BTC-USDT market and ETH-USDT market. Here’s what I found.
The BTC-USDT order book has ~13 BTC worth open orders on the Buy side for price ranging between 3800 to 3879 USDT. On the Sell side, ~3.5 BTC worth of open orders for price ranging between 3887 and 3908 USDT.
The ETH-USDT order book is full with ~100 ETH on Buy side with price ranging between 128.97 to 133.99 USDT. On the Sell side, ~84 ETH worth of open orders for price ranging between 134.15 and 138 USDT.
At the time of this writing (12 hours later) , the open BTC orders are ~11 BTC and for ETH it is ~80 ETH on both sides.
Bonus Comparison: XRP-USDT
I also grabbed a quick screenshot of XRP-USDT market before the Binance maintenance. Have a look when compared with XRP-USDT order book right now.
Verdict
We cannot be certain on how much does Binance Maintenance affect WazirX, nor can we confirm if WazirX entirely uses Binance Liquidity on their order books. However, there definitely is room for suspicion strictly because of the stark volume difference in WazirX order book during and after Binance maintenance.
We have reached out to WazirX for comments and will update the article once we receive a response.
What do you think is happening on WazirX orderbooks? Let us know in the comments below
