Is it not already a known fact that the exchanges with 0% fees trade with themselves in order to create fake volume? The CEO of Bitcoin China already said this about Okcoin. Okcoin is already known to be creating fake volume. So it will not come as a surprise that the other exchanges that have 0% fees are creating fake volume too.
It's been proposed enough times but I don't know if it's been comprehensively proven. I remember some ex OKcoin employee saying they were told to keep it churning. There's nothing stopping them from doing so however there are probably enough traders ready to ping coins back and forth for it not to be a necessity.
Well it would be a necessity if the exchange owners want to attract more users. By increasing their volume artificially it makes them look like they have a good and healthy operation with liquid markets. I mean who would want to have and own a low volume exchange? With all the questionable schemes that we have seen in the bitcoin world, it would be stupid of us not to believe that faking the volume is not happening right now.
