How to Spot Wash Trading in Crypto

Volume looks like interest — until you realise a lot of it is fake. Wash trading is when someone trades with themselves to inflate a token's apparent activity and lure real buyers.

Why scammers wash trade

High volume makes a token trend on data sites, look liquid, and seem in demand. It's bait designed to pull in genuine money.

Signs of wash trading

• Volume far larger than liquidity. Real volume can't massively exceed a tiny pool for long.
• Repetitive, similar-sized trades at regular intervals.
• A small cluster of wallets doing most of the trading.
• Volume spikes with no price discovery — lots of activity, little real movement.

How to check

Compare volume to liquidity, and look at whether trades come from many wallets or just a few. A token can't sustain real volume many times its liquidity.

Let the tool flag it

ChainInspector Suite's anomaly detector flags abnormal volume-to-liquidity ratios — a primary fingerprint of wash trading.