The crypto market is hot. But is it an illusion?
The Indicator from Planet Money
NPR
4.7 • 9.2K Ratings
🗓️ 17 September 2025
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There has been an inordinate amount of trading activity recently in the crypto markets. But what if much of that activity was an illusion? A smokescreen? A fraud? Today on the show, we look at the practice of wash trading, and how it’s evolved in the crypto world.
Related episodes:
The fake market in crypto
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | NPR. The cryptocurrency market has been especially frothy in recent months. According to CoinDesk, |
| 0:17.7 | trading activity on crypto exchanges clocked in at $9.7 trillion last month. |
| 0:23.9 | To put how much that is in perspective, that makes it the busiest month for crypto trading this year |
| 0:29.2 | and almost twice as busy as the same time last year. |
| 0:32.3 | But what if a lot of this trading activity is an illusion? |
| 0:36.1 | And what if it's really a smokescreen for fraud? |
| 0:40.0 | This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Adrienne Ma. And I'm Waylon Wong. A few years ago, |
| 0:44.9 | we did an episode on an emerging practice in the crypto market called Wash Trading. Today on the show, |
| 0:50.8 | we'll look at how the practice is evolving and what regulators are doing about it. |
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