Would you also reckon that it is also possible that many of those exchanges with fake volumes are a part of a global money laundering ring?
It could very well be yeah. Most of the exchanges in crypto are unregulated, and plan to stay unregulated. If your goal was to gain ground as legitimate and compliant exchange, which Coinbase is, you are completely open and willing to go for it.
Some exchanges do ask for KYC verification, but that's just an attempt to shake off unwanted attention from authorities. We don't know what's going on behind the scenes and they still are an unregulated entity.
Binance mildly started to ask for more personal information, but there is a reason they don't want to become regulated, and money laundering might be part of that, or maybe they just want to continue making insane amounts of money as they are doing now.
I might be totally wrong on the money laundering aspect, but I somehow feel there is something shady going on with Binance.