Two of the world's major cryptocurrency exchanges, Binance and Bitget, have initiated investigations into the recent trading activity surrounding the RAVE token, following allegations by on-chain analyst ZachXBT that insiders manipulated the market to drive the token's rapid surge. Bitget's CEO, Gracy Chen, confirmed the exchange had begun investigating the matter, while Binance CEO Richard Teng also announced that the platform would look into the claims.
Another exchange, Gate, was also implicated in ZachXBT's investigation. A $10,000 bounty has been offered by ZachXBT for any whistleblowers who can provide evidence about the parties involved. The RAVE token's sudden 4,500% rally over a week led to over $44 million in short positions being liquidated in a single day.
Notably, nearly 90% of the token's supply was concentrated in just three Gnosis Safe wallets at the time, and millions of tokens were transferred to exchanges shortly before the price began to surge. RaveDAO, the project behind the token, claims to be a Web3-focused electronic music event platform, offering blockchain-based ticketing and community governance. Despite reporting $3 million in revenue in 2025, the project's token has been trading below $0.50 for most of its history before the recent surge. The token's market value briefly exceeded $6 billion at its peak, but has since dropped by over 50%.
Allegations of a 'bait and liquidate' pattern have also emerged, suggesting that the visible transfers of tokens may have been designed to lure traders into short positions, only to force them to buy back at higher prices as the price rose. RaveDAO has denied any involvement in the recent price action, stating that the team is 'not engaged in, nor responsible for, recent price action' and plans to liquidate portions of unlocked tokens 'when appropriate'. The project has also announced plans to explore 'appropriate models' to tie team incentives to ecosystem growth, but has not committed to any specific mechanism or timeline.