HitBTC’s comment on the latest Bitwise report
Different exchanges have different customer profile. HitBTC is among the first cryptoexchanges to offer low-latency institutional grade (FIX) trading API. This is why the client profile of HitBTC differs from that of unmentioned but implied ‘reference exchanges’.
Algo trading implies trading in small order sizes with extremely high frequency in order to take advantage of very short-term market movements that happen in millionths of a second and are therefore undiscernable to human traders.
HitBTC has managed to attract many institutional participants contributing to institutional (read mass) adoption and market efficiency. This, in turn, has resulted in different order size – order frequency relationship. To many lacking sophistication and financial literacy, this does seem like an anomaly that these gifted individuals attempt to portray as manipulative trading practices while in fact, this does represent solely the client profile. Note that our overnight volumes are consistent with the day-trade pattern: unlike humans placing round digit orders and having to eat and sleep, machines don’t sleep and react consistently on emerging market patterns.
To put it simply: HitBTC is among the most technologically advanced digital asset trading platforms. Our technology sets us aside from the majority of our industry peers. This, in turn, facilitates institutional participation. Institutional traders rely on sophisticated trading practices rooted in HFT (High-Frequency Trading) domain. The trading strategies employed by such institutions are markedly different from those utilized by the retail (manual) traders. This difference is reflected, among other dimensions, in different order frequency – volume patterns. People who don’t possess sufficient diligence and/or expertise in finance domain might get confused and tangled with the message they manage to discern from the data they happen to possess. This results in them reaching wrong conclusions that are ought to mislead the general public when spilled in the public space.