wash trade

noun

A trade in which someone simultaneously sells and buys (from themselves) the same financial instruments, to create misleading, artificial activity in the market (especially to make the instruments appear to be frequently traded and in demand).

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Meanings

nounwash trade (plural wash trades)

plural wash trades

  1. A trade in which someone simultaneously sells and buys (from themselves) the same financial instruments, to create misleading, artificial activity in the market (especially to make the instruments appear to be frequently traded and in demand).

    To do so, you plan to list the NFT for sale and buy it from yourself at a buzzworthy sum—say, for 1,000 ETH. If you already have a lot of crypto wealth, you can easily execute this wash trade by simply purchasing the NFT from yourself using a second account.

    2022, Seoyoung Kim, DeFi For Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 116
Cite this entry
APA

wash trade. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/wash%20trade

MLA

“wash trade.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/wash%20trade. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “wash trade,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/wash%20trade.

Source: wash trade on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.