Commenter said "there's no way to distinguish fake wash trades from real ones" and I showed a case where a wash trade was, to anybody looking at it, very obviou

Commenter said "there's no way to distinguish fake wash trades from real ones" and I showed a case where a wash trade was, to anybody looking at it, very obviously fake. I agree with the other part of the comment. Blockchains do not track "persons" but "wallets" and so metrics like "number of users" will not be accurate. But it is not accurate to imply that it is impossible to recognize wash trades. In many cases they are very obvious, and even can be automatically flagged. In other cases - like with CEX mixers - only the authorities can detect the fraud.