Bitquery uncovered a suspected wash-trading operation spanning 438 pools, including tokens displaying billions in liquidity despite holding barely $10,000 in USDC.

A single Solana wallet generated $1.4 billion in suspected wash trades, accounting for nearly a quarter of Raydium's concentrated-liquidity volume.

On Oct. 21, blockchain analytics firm Bitquery reported that the wallet accounted for 22.7% of the $6.17 billion traded across Raydium's concentrated liquidity market maker (CLMM) pools between Sept. 21 and Oct. 20.

The investigation identified 108,871 swaps across 438 pools, many containing tokens that imitated established cryptocurrencies such as XRP, Litecoin, Monero, and Lisk. Bitquery traced the activity to a suspected wash-trading operation that used about $12,000 in working capital to repeatedly generate transactions worth millions of dollars.

The findings raise fresh concerns about the reliability of decentralized exchange trading volumes and liquidity figures, which investors frequently use to assess market activity and determine whether tokens can be bought or sold without substantial price disruption.

The operation relied on rapidly buying tokens and selling them back into the same pools, allowing a relatively small amount of capital to generate substantial reported turnover.

In one Oct. 20 transaction, the wallet exchanged 11,102 USDC for tokens in a pool carrying Lisk's LSK ticker, then sold them back 22 seconds later for 11,100.87 USDC.

That transaction generated approximately $22,200 in recorded trading volume at a cost of just $1.13, excluding network fees. Bitquery identified 22,685 completed round trips during the reporting period.

The investigation also found substantial discrepancies between the liquidity shown on popular trading platforms and the dollar reserves backing the suspected operation's token pools.

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