Following allegations of a manipulated price rally, major cryptocurrency exchanges Binance and Bitget have initiated investigations into the trading activity surrounding RaveDAO's RAVE token. The claims suggest that insiders may have orchestrated a large short squeeze, resulting in the token's rapid price increase. The investigation was sparked by on-chain analyst ZachXBT, who also offered a $10,000 bounty for whistleblowers to come forward with evidence. The token's price surged by 4,500% over the course of a week, resulting in over $44 million in liquidations.
Notably, nearly 90% of the token's supply was concentrated in just three wallets at the time, and millions of tokens were transferred to exchanges before the price began to rise. RaveDAO, a Web3 project focused on electronic music events, has stated that it is not responsible for the recent price action and is exploring measures to tie team incentives to ecosystem growth.