Rave DAO’s RAVE token crashes amid series of warnings

The public scrutiny of Rave DAO’s RAVE token reached DEFCON 1 moments before its crash started, as market stakeholders, including ZachXBT, Bitget, Binance, and Gate, were drawn into conversations about insider manipulation red flags. Similar warnings by BubbleMaps about the SIREN token preceded multiple rounds of what appear to be classic pump-and-dumps, leading to huge losses for holders. 

A previous Cryptopolitan report had spotted the RAVE and SIREN rallies near all-time high levels, along with reports of coordinated pumps that often benefit insiders. The SIREN token’s crash came barely an hour after Cryptopolitan’s report. 

As of the time of this report, RAVE is down over 30% on the 24-hour chart, currently trading around $11.47 from a high of over $27 within the day today, April 18. 

Both RAVE and SIREN have erased over 50% of their value in relatively short-term trading, delivering the dump that market analysts warned about while holders were riding the highs of the tokens’ pumps. 

RAVE cracks under pressure of scrutiny

Bitget’s CEO Gracy Chen responded to ZachXBT, the prolific on-chain sleuth’s call to investigate the RaveDAO project over “pump and dump activity” that he claimed started on the Bitget, Binance and Gate exchanges. The executive assured that they had started to look into the matter. 

However, the pressure on RAVE came from multiple angles as Zach also offered a $25,000 bounty, upgraded from $10,000,  for anyone with information implicating the people behind what he described as “blatant market manipulation by insiders controlling >90%” of the token at the expense of retail traders. 

According to Zach, the RAVE manipulation is even worse than the SIREN case that he linked to DWF Labs in a late March report. The post was in response to a claim that a small cluster of wallets controls nearly 50% of SIREN’s supply, worth nearly $1 billion at the time. 

Another on-chain analyst estimated that about 98% of RAVE’s supply is actually distributed between three cohorts: 

• RAVE team wallets – 95.3% 
• Bitget users suspected to be insiders – 3.1%
• Gate users suspected to be insiders – 0.34%

The April 13 post came with an ominous warning: “You’re looking at a $10B coin – it’s effectively a ~$200M market cap coin…”

Curiously, the token dropped nearly 50% on the same day, wiping out nearly $7 million in leveraged positions. 

On April 14, RAVE warned users to “remain mindful” of risks and to trade with caution as it had “observed heightened market volatility.”

Meme trenches ignored insider manipulation crash warnings 

The insider control allegations have been a persistent tag that has stuck to the Siren project from as far back as March 23, when BubbleMaps warned that a single entity controlled about 50% of SIREN’s supply after the token made a nearly vertical run to $2 billion in market cap from $40 million. 

Since then, the token has routinely witnessed sharp drops in market cap of between $500 million and $1 billion, which have also corresponded with price drops that have brought pain to retail investors. 

The latest episode on April 17 saw the token’s market cap drop from $1.52 billion to around $320 million, along with a price drop from about $2.1 to $0.44 at its lowest point. 

Previous Cryptopolitan reports citing BubbleMaps data have warned about impending crashes in tokens with insider manipulation red flags, including River, which is trading at $6.78 from a peak above $80 and PIPPIN, which is down almost 97% to $0.03 after peaking at $0.896 in early February.

When BubbleMaps’ “you were warned” post on April 3  reminded burned traders that they should have seen the 95% crash coming, one would think that would have meant lesson learned, but today’s Rave DAO crash serves as a reminder of the risky trading that is often attributed when people mention the “memecoin trenches.”

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