In crypto, wash trading usually refers to the practice of exchanges or project creators colluding to trade the same asset back and forth in order to make the volume/liquidity/popularity look greater than it is.
- "Our coin hit $100M daily volume, get on this rocketship before it's too late!"
- "Our exchange does $1B annually, so you know we're trustworthy!"
- "Hey investors, look at the massive demand for our GPUs (driven by the company we invested $100B)!"
Yes, when NVIDIA gives assets to a third party in return for a stake in the company, and then that company uses those assets to secure loans, and those loans are predicated on the value of that asset, thats a single asset being claimed by multiple parties who will all write in their books the value of that asset.
Its generating the facade of activity, the same.
You are right theres no public ledger for the wash trading, but the fact that the underlying real physical asset is NVIDIAs product, lends the same intentional activity: to leverage apparent markeet activity to inflate the value of assets.
- "Our coin hit $100M daily volume, get on this rocketship before it's too late!"
- "Our exchange does $1B annually, so you know we're trustworthy!"
- "Hey investors, look at the massive demand for our GPUs (driven by the company we invested $100B)!"