Orca Crypto
Security term

Wash trading

Trading with yourself to fake volume and interest.

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Updated 2026-08-303 min readDefinition
Definition

Trading with yourself to fake volume and interest.

Wash trading means buying and selling the same asset between wallets you control, creating the appearance of activity without any real transfer of risk.

It inflates volume rankings and NFT sales figures, which is why volume alone is a poor measure of genuine interest.

In practice

Compare volume across several independent sources, and be skeptical of tokens whose volume exceeds their market cap by a wide margin.

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