[BeefWellington]

> I wonder what basis they use to determine "likely to be fake or non-economic". Seems highly unlikely they have any concrete evidence.

I suspect what they're classifying as Wash Trading are actually tumbler services that essentially launder the source and destinations of transactions. Strictly speaking, those are arguably economic because the tumbler takes a (sometimes substantial) cut but it would fall out of the line of thinking of "buying goods or services" that people think more traditionally.

That said, the methodology is right there at the end of the article[1]. It does seem rather open to thumbs on scales.

[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierpaz/2022/08/26/more-than-...

[cwkoss]

There a probably a lot of people attempting to profit with arbitrage bots as well - I'd imagine that behavior would look a lot like wash trading to this analysis.