Maybe. Having worked in the wire room before, that is not inaccurate. That said, transferring one billion would require advance knowledge, multiple signoffs, and adjusting permissions for people. Depending on the institution the payments may have to be split, but odds are the bank would eat the cost to maintain that relationship.

I run a VC fund. We move store money around in large amounts (6-7 figure transfers, 7-8 figure balances). Our bank loves us and doesn't charge us any fees for anything ($0 wires etc). Having millions parked with them allows to lend the money which is how they make their revenue. They don't care about fees.

In the case of China, hundreds of thousands of transactions is too many, but it is apparently routine for transfers of money outside China to be done in a large number of small transactions due to the legal per-person limit on transferring money outside. (And yes, since it's a per-person limit, not only do you need to do a large number of transactions, you need a new cooperator to put their name on each one.)

> completely anonymously

Except we're all out here talking about this and no one knows what other $1bn transactions have occurred in the banking system today so we're not talking about those.