By Larry Wright
Introduction
Engagement in the financial sector has expanded by multiple times over the course of recent decades. Because of this, innovations have been introduced into the marketplaces, making the procedure of trading far less difficult.
Trading, an activity that was formerly solely available to those with considerable financial resources, has become open to people from all walks of life, irrespective of their wealth status. There’s no doubt the fact that it has shown a high level of success lately and has a significant capacity to experience even more expansion.
Nevertheless, as a result of the recent surge in the financial markets, a large number of cybercriminals have begun to take advantage of the market’s inefficiencies. Unfortunately, many cons have been perpetrated throughout the years, most notably in the stock market, making it a dangerous realm, especially for newcomers.
Consumers have reported losing numerous tens of thousands of dollars as a direct consequence of these types of scams, and it should come as no surprise that the prevalence of frauds is increasing on a daily basis.
More and more dishonest people are capitalizing on this chance to take advantage of the more vulnerable participants in the market by using profitable hoaxes that don’t seem to be frauds at all.
Wash trading is one of the methods that may be used to accomplish this goal. The process of simultaneously acquiring and selling the very same investment vehicles in an effort to influence the price of those securities on the marketplace is referred to as “wash trading.”
In this guide essay, we will gain an understanding of what wash trading is, how it can be used as a meaningful strategy to tamper with the market, and what strategies one can use to recognize and avoid engaging in wash trading.
What Is Wash Trading?
When a client simultaneously purchases and sells the very same security investment in order to manipulate the monetary market, they are engaging in a practice known as “wash trading.” Because purchasing the identical property over and again renders the previous transaction null and void, the Internal Revenue Service alludes to this operation as a “wash trade” as it washes away all that precedes it.
Investing in this manner may also be referred to as round-trip investing due to the fact that you will ultimately find yourself having ownership of the same asset in your investment, regardless of the time you sell or buy it.
In the most basic sense, the term “wash trade” refers to the practice of an individual simultaneously purchasing and transferring the value of the exact same asset.
The description of wash trades, on the other hand, is one step beyond and focuses on the individual’s goal, in addition to the intention of any brokerage the customer could be dealing with.
How Does Wash Trading Work?
The marketplace may be manipulated in a variety of ways, including via the use of wash transactions like wash trade. In the interest of attempting to exert influence on valuation or trading strategies, individuals are free to purchase and offer the very same commodities as per their preferences.
It’s possible that the purpose of such rapid buying and selling is to stimulate selling in order to push prices downward or enhance purchasing engagement as a way to force costs higher. It is possible for both customers and brokerage to collude in order to affect trade volume, often for the personal profit of both parties involved.
For instance, the brokerage could gain from the practice of wash trading by taking payments from other customers who wish to buy the share that is the subject of the wash trade. On the contrary, the owner could be able to make profits from the selling of investments by manipulating the prices of those instruments as per their desired profit margins.
However, what is important to note is that such an act necessitates that the persons engaged have specific information about securities that the wider populace does not have; only then are they able to exploit the market to their notorious motives.
In contrast to bigger, more recognized businesses, lower and more recent exchanges are more likely to be manipulated for the purpose of wash trading. This is due to the fact that regional and local economies are much simpler to control rather than big markets, which have impregnable security frameworks in their systems.
Since such newer markets often deal with cryptocurrencies with a low market cap, even a tiny amount of purchasing and selling can cause certain algorithms to “wake up” and produce higher activity in the market, thereby luring investments. Furthermore, the market value and trading volume of newly issued coins will not be recorded and are therefore not attached to the new coins.
As a result, the creators of the currency or any other people within the organization may participate in wash trade in order to deceive members about the actual worth of the currency.
Keeping in mind the disastrous effect of wash trades on the market economy and individuals themselves, the government has taken some initiatives to limit it and ban it wherever possible.
After the passing of the Commodity Exchange Act in the year 1936, which mandated all dealing of commodities to take place on authorized marketplaces, the national administration became the first entity in the world to outlaw wash trading.
Stock opportunists often used wash trading before it was outlawed in the 1930s to send a misleading desired indication in a market in order to artificially inflate its price so that they could profit by short-selling it.
The laws of the Commodity Futures Trade Commission (CFTC) presently ban intermediaries from benefitting from wash transactions as well. This is the case even if the brokerage claims they were unaware of the investor’s objectives.
Consequently, in order to ensure that their clients are purchasing interests in a firm with the intention of participating in collective ownership interest, intermediaries are required to do diligence on their customers., thoroughly know their respective backgrounds, financial well-being, and all necessary identification things.
Additionally, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) enforces stringent laws prohibiting wash trading and mandates that tax filers cannot offset damages that are the direct consequence of wash sales.
Examples of Wash Trading
Let’s pretend that a stock trader by the name of Stevan and a brokerage business, let’s say “Armours,” are working together to acquire and sell shares of a corporation XYZ as quickly as possible. The expectation is that other shareholders will take note of the action on XYZ shares and then make the decision to participate in XYZ and buy their maximum number of shares.
When this happens, Stevan earns money off of the price hike brought about by these individual purchases of XYZ. Subsequently, “Stevan” engages in short selling of his XYZ share, which brings the value of the shares down further while also allowing him to benefit from the ongoing price movement.
This is how to wash trading occurs, and this has been widely anticipated in the crypto market, too, and not just the stock market. As more authorities are trying to control the market by their presence, the pace at which wash tradings occur is increasing at an alarming rate.
Let’s try understanding crypto wash trades via an example.
Big shareholders working on a cryptocurrency project known as ABC may use numerous accounts to purchase more ABC cryptocurrency from the organization. They intend to sell the very same quantity of ABC to the marketplaces after they have accumulated extra ABC, which they will do whenever they have obtained their desired threshold level.
Once this level has been attained, they plan to change ABC into Bitcoin and then utilize Bitcoin to purchase further ABC. This practice would persist for an extended period of time, with the perpetrators utilizing different locations in an effort to conceal their true intentions.
The recent boom in ABC will push individuals from beyond the company to make the decision to engage in the business with a motive of making greater profits from such a demanded venture when the right time comes. They subsequently invest their resources in it and add it to their respective asset portfolios.
The price of ABC increases as a result of this manifested demand coming from external investors who have long-term intentions. After then, the whistleblower, the original mastermind, comes into play and sells his part of ABC cryptocurrency, making a significant profit.
That’s how investors mislead people; when investors put in their resources, they quickly unload their relative positions, sell their shares and make a profit that way.
How to Participate in Wash Trading?
It is not impossible to make a mistake and engage in a wash trade. When determining whether or whether wash trading is permissible, the purpose of the parties involved is the single most significant consideration. Pricing manipulation may be accomplished via the use of wash trading by high-frequency trading businesses as well as digital currency marketplaces.
High-frequency trading, often known as HFT, is a type of making a trade that makes utilization highly advanced computer algorithms to execute a huge number of transactions in a short amount of time (fractions of a second). Numerous marketplaces are capable of being examined through the use of mathematical computations, and huge orders may be made depending on the results of such analyses.
Since the beginning of the bitcoin industry, wash trading has already been actively practiced. A prime example of this phenomenon is the impact that China had on the price of bitcoin in 2015.
As per statistics provided by CryptoCompare, during that year, over 92% of all bitcoin transactions were conducted using the Chinese currency known as the Renminbi. The massive amounts of business that were conducted by Chinese merchants made this outcome conceivable.
Another illustration of this could be seen in May of the last year when a huge influx of investors began selling Bitcoin, which caused the price to drop the same or more around 30 percent.
However, exchanges may occasionally engage in wash trading for the sake of luring new buyers into the marketplace, despite their best efforts to deceive existing investors. Its purpose is to encourage optimism among individuals by letting them know that a significant number of transactions take place on their exchange.
The fact that some investors consider the levels of trading volume as little more than a fundamental signal is among the explanations for why they are susceptible to being duped by wash trading. This information is often followed by traders and financiers in order to identify a pattern in the market. The skewed data has the potential to fool dealers, causing them to lose money as a result.
When seen from the point of view of the corporation, wash trade may have had both beneficial and detrimental impacts. Whenever there is an excessive amount of trading and purchasing of a certain stock on the marketplace, the value of that stock skyrockets.
Because fair value is determined by utilizing the most recent pricing, this one will result in a rise in the industry’s overall value.
On the other hand, in the long run, the valuation of the shares will come close to their underlying valuation as a result of the downturn in the marketplace. It’s possible that this will result in a fall in equity, too, though.
How to Recognize and Stay Away from Wash Trading?
Developing technological advancements that facilitate self-trade avoidance is the most feasible approach for markets to monitor wash trading since this is the highest accurate method.
For instance, if a dealer’s purchase order and sell order is an excellent parallel, the computer will not let the user proceed with the subsequent operation. This is because the buy and sell orders are considered to be part of the same contract.
Additionally, one may develop a simulation to monitor comparable figures, which gives them the ability to throw a caution signal on any activity that seems fishy. Last but not least, platforms and organizations have the ability to limit the amount of trading that may take place within a single profile for a customer.
They should guarantee that these limitations are incorporated into the system, along with ensuring rigorous and stringent coherence by KYC procedures in order to limit an excess number of traders for whatever reason.
If you want to minimize becoming the casualty of something like a wash trade, you should gravitate toward digital currencies that are more experienced and have bigger trading volumes; as I highlighted earlier how, massive markets aren’t easy to be manipulated by cons.
Moreover, when the size of the economy increases, the capital required for dishonest actors to influence the system also increases. You can probably understand how challenging it would be to accomplish this task in expansive marketplaces like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, each of which has valued at thousands of trillions of dollars.
The higher the market capitalization of the cryptocurrency, the greater the number of exchangers that will trade in it. This makes it possible for a more accurate finding of prices. For instance, if one community permits wash transactions, then arbitrageurs would work to eliminate any price disparity that exists with some other swaps by siphoning off their profits.
The larger the community for cryptocurrencies, the greater the likelihood of a large number of platforms trading in that marketplace. This creates chances for differential trading across the various venues, which contributes to bringing prices back into line.
In the end, you should look for marketplaces that have a long history of trading under their belts. You will then be able to contrast the current number of transactions with the background of that cryptocurrency. This assessment will show if excessive quantities of volume have recently come onto the market, which may prompt investors to make incorrect assumptions.
A competent businessman or marketer will always have a defensive strategy in place to protect himself from all such scams. The key to achieving reliability in trading is to have methods and techniques that can be repeated for entering transactions, as well as graphs that help determine when and how to leave a stock or trade.
Conclusion
In a robust marketplace, wash trading is indeed a fairly prevalent activity, but since it takes advantage of the aim for trading by the officials, it should be avoided.
A fair trading atmosphere may be achieved by the implementation of rules and legislation that prevent market participants from exploiting this gap in the law. Since a long time ago, manipulating the marketplace has indeed been viewed as acceptable.
For this purpose, exchanges have recently implemented a slew of safeguards, including the Additional Surveillance Measure checklist, to ensure the security of investment capital. Despite this, occasionally, there are completely valid justifications for engaging in wash trades, but the fact that, most of the time, the purpose and goal behind such operations are anything but pure.
Therefore, one has to constantly perform their own research and analysis before one actually invests in any resource that seems highly attractive at that point in time.