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The NFT market saw an uptick in wash trading following a recovery in NFT marketplace trading volume, which hit $1.89 billion in February.

The top six nonfungible token (NFT) marketplaces saw a rise in wash trading for the fourth straight month, with a total volume of $580 million.

According to a new report from CoinGecko, February 2023 witnessed a 126% increase from the previous month’s volume of $250 million. As for the reason for the jump, the report points to a correlation with the overall recovery of NFT marketplace trading volume, which hit $1.89 billion in February.

Wash trading refers to the manipulation of trading volume or price through repeated transactions.

The six marketplaces included in the report are Magic Eden, OpenSea, Blur, X2Y2, CryptoPunks and LooksRare. X2Y2, Blur and LooksRare played the largest roles in February’s wash trading volume, with $280 million (49.7%), $150 million (27.7%) and $80 million (15.1%), respectively.

The marketplaces have previously incentivized users to increase trading volume via transaction rewards.

The other two marketplaces, Magic Eden and OpenSea, reported $590,000 and $42.57 million in wash trading, respectively. CryptoPunks, on the other hand, didn’t see any NFT wash trading, according to the report.

Related: 70% of unregulated exchange transactions are wash trading: NBER study

The CoinGecko report reveals that NFT washing trading made up a combined 23.4% of “unadjusted trading volume” across the industry’s six largest marketplaces.

While wash trading is illegal in traditional financial markets, the issue can be found in both the broader crypto space and with NFTs due to a lack of clear regulations.

Back in January, investor Mark Cuban said that wash trading will cause the next “implosion” in the crypto market. Meanwhile, new artificial intelligence-based technology has surfaced aiming to troubleshoot issues in the NFT market, including wash trading.

As reported by Cointelegraph on March 16, a scam recently surfaced involving websites promoting fake BLUR token airdrops, resulting in $300,000 being successfully stolen.

Following the Arbitrum airdrop announcement, crypto users who have been eligible for the airdrop are already selling them in OTC markets.

The Arbitrum community is speculating and selling off their unreleased ARB tokens in over-the-counter (OTC) markets following the Arbitrum airdrop announcement. 

The Arbitrum Foundation announced that ARB, Arbritrum’s new token, will be airdropped to eligible community members on Thursday, March 23. It explained that ARB marks Arbitrum’s official transition into a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), meaning ARB holders will be able to vote on key decisions governing Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova — networks that allow users to transact on the Ethereum blockchain with better speeds and lower fees.

OTC trading allows easy buying and selling of cryptocurrencies directly between a seller and a buyer. The process is usually very fast and funds are transferred directly from a bank account to the seller. In this case, when a price is agreed on by the buyer and seller, the seller receives payment from the buyer and then gives up the seed phrase linked to the eligible wallet.

Jack, who wants to remain anonymous, has explained to Cointelegraph that the craze to sell off the unreleased ARB tokens is based on speculations about the market cap of the tokens when launched. He explained that the price of one $ARB coin, when launched, could be as high as $1, so most people do not mind selling at $0.5 per token and giving room for a possible profit of $0.5 for the buyers.

have secured 6-figs of $ARB OTC at an avg. price of $0.98

wish me luck

— Cole (@cole0x) March 21, 2023

Arbitrum holds 55% of the Ethereum layer-2 market share, according to layer-2 analytics site L2 Beat. As one of the largest crypto projects without a token, anticipation for an Arbitrum token has been at a fever pitch since the network went live in 2021.

Related: Arbitrum airdrop hype helps zkSync addresses jump over 5X in a week

With the ARB’s total circulation number of 10 billion, The Arbitrum community will control 56% of those tokens – the airdrop will grant 11.5% of the total supply to eligible Arbitrum users and 1.1% to DAOs that operate in the Arbitrum ecosystem.

The Arbitrum community has also warned others to stay vigilant after reports of phishing websites and scams offering Arbitrum airdrop tokens.

Arbitrum’s main competitor in the Ethereum scaling space, Optimism, launched its OP token nearly a year ago when it made its own transition to DAO governance.