Poloniex is probably in on it too because I highly doubt the single guy running the wash trading bots is paying Poloniex 100+ BTC per day just to wash trade. The act of just buying 100 BTC of coins per day would be far more effective over the last 6 months it started to become heavily wash traded. That would be 18,000 BTC of buys in lieu of the wash trades (7.5 million dollars if using a BTC price of $420).
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/it-is-time-to-question-poloniex-market-manipulation-1473947
Don't you have a math error?
0.0005 x 20,000 = 10 BTC not 100 BTC
That doesn't diminish your point about the large volume perhaps being wash trades of insiders selling to themselves to pump up the price and volume.