why would someone do wash trading 
in some cases wash trading bolsters the trading volume of a security potentially inspiring more legitimate trade activity wash trading can also be used to help artificially boost the price of the security as part of a pump and dump scheme the bottom linewash trading is an illegal activity in which a trader buys and sells the same security either within a short period of time or on separate exchanges in order to inflate the trading volume or the price of that security wash trading can occur across a variety of industries and assets but it has recently become a major consideration for the cryptocurrency and high frequency trading spaces 