Does this apply to NFTs though, where you're usually talking about a unique NFT within a collection of a few thousand? If you hold a unique NFT and trade it to yourself for a crazy amount of money just once, then that's what everyone is going to see as the last sale price of that NFT. They're not trading often anyway usually, people would probably be more suspicious if you had hundreds of trades.

Edit: I was mixing this up with another conversation, the parent comment obviously isn't about NFTs. I'll leave this here though because I think wash trading is even more relevant to them.

The book is tiny and the exchange is probably the one doing the wash trading.

Why wouldn't the exchange just lie and say that volume is higher than it actually is?

The more money you have, the lower the fees. No fees for being a Maker.

You can actually pay nothing on FTX. Only a .025 taker fee + 60% discount for holding FTX coin plus a .01 rebate for being a market maker.

Most of wash trading is probably done by connected individuals though. Whole point of being unregulated. Just be friends with CZ or SBF.

Well, the book can be tiny sometimes.

It makes bo sense when it comes to any popular cryptocurrency. The only way book can be small for these is on small exchange. But if you attempt to manipylate it to bring in away from current price on large exchanges you'll be immediately interfered with by people doing interexchange arbitrage. Also manipulating small exchange has small impact.

also fees can be nonexistent for big customers, which are likely to engage in such things