The beginning and end of TRB’s “roller coaster”: whale control, team shipments, excessive leverage

At the beginning of 2024, Tellor Tributes token TRB, an old project on the oracle track, has completed a "roller coaster" performance.

On December 31, TRB, which had risen from around $11 to $268 in more than 3 months, did not brake, but continued to rise in the next 6 months. It reached a top near $590 within the hour. An even more surprising scene followed. Within 6 hours, TRB plummeted to around $149.

In 12 hours, TRB experienced sharp rises and falls, with its logo resembling a "full moon scimitar", causing the first "long-short double explosion" tragedy in the crypto asset market in the new year. , the total contract liquidation amount of the entire network was US$73.1 million, and long and short investors were angry. They were tricked by this "demon coin".

An existing voice in the market has finally been heard: TRB with a maximum supply of 2586819 has been controlled. Spot On Chain, an on-chain analysis tool, previously calculated that “of the 2.5 million TRB in circulation, approximately 1.7 million are on exchanges, while 20 whales hold 660,000.”

The fund-raising behavior of some addresses was happening in August 2023 when TRB started to rise. At that time, the crypto asset investment and service organization LD Capital mentioned TRB's on-chain position building behavior in a report. Perhaps because of this, some investors pointed the controller at LD, prompting Lou Jiyue, a partner of the institution, to come forward to clarify by publicly offering a reward of US$10 million for evidence.

Afterwards, some on-chain analysts pointed out that before TRB plummeted on January 1, the Tellor Tributes team deposited 4211 TRB into the centralized exchange Coinbase. On-chain data shows that the team transferred 7,000 TRB to Coinbase 2 days ago, when TRB continued to rise.

In the TRB market that lacks liquidity, over-leveraged trading positions have also contributed to TRB's sudden rise and fall. Some traders observed that TRB’s daily contract trading volume is more than 500 million US dollars, and “there are many gamblers.”

Giant whales control the market, team shipments, The over-leveraged and uncontrolled “demon coin” TRB thus completed the first cut of the new year.

Double explosion of long and short "Full Moon Scimitar" 12-hour swing harvest 

At 9:25 the night before New Year's Eve, TRB, which had been rising continuously for four months, climbed from $268.88. By 6:15 the next morning, it had risen to $593.09. The increase reached 120.5%.

Just after TRB successfully attracted the market's attention, in the next hour, TRB fell off a cliff, falling to a low of $143.69 within 6 hours, from a high of Points dropped 312.75%.

Severe fluctuations in a short period of time directly caused the "double explosion of long and short" in the contract market. Data shows that in the 24 hours before 8 a.m. on January 1, the liquidation amount of the TRB futures contract was US$73.1 million, of which short positions were liquidated at US$44.49 million and long orders were liquidated at US$28.61 million.

24-hour TRB futures contract liquidation of $73.1 million

Except what happened in In addition to liquidation in centralized exchanges, decentralized DeFi applications have not been immune.

On January 1, the decentralized synthetic asset issuance protocol Synthetix (SNX) founder @kain.eth stated on the X platform that due to abnormal fluctuations in TRB , SNX stakers lost approximately $2 million.

@kain.eth explained that TRB originally had an open interest limit of $250,000 on Synthetix, but as its price has increased in the past few months As a result, the upper limit has swelled to US$12.5 million and should have been lowered, but the risk control was not strict. "TRB prices surged today and several short positions were opened, but due to the misalignment between spot and contract prices, the arbitrage balance failed. This is a lesson for Synthetix."

TRB’s price anomaly also appears in exchange quotes. At around 10:00 on January 1, the price of TRB/USDT on OKX was quoted at US$233.24, while the price of TRB/USDT on Binance was US$170.74, with a price difference of 36.6%.

In fact, TRB, whose logo looks like a "full moon scimitar", appeared as early as 2019. It is the native generation of the decentralized oracle protocol Tellor Tributes. The total supply of coins is 2,586,819, and the current circulation is 2,553,723, almost fully in circulation.

CoinGecko, a third-party data platform for the crypto asset market, shows that in early October 2019, TRB entered the secondary market, with an initial price of only $0.8. It climbed as high as $146.14 during the bull market and fell below $100 4 days later. In the following year, TRB prices have been fluctuating in double digits.

TRB prices have been quiet for nearly 2 years, but suddenly changed in August 2023‍‍

From the beginning of 2023, TRB remained between 8-10 US dollars. Until September 16, TRB rushed from around 10 US dollars to more than 40 US dollars in less than 1 month, which doubled several times. In some transactions at the end of September So even more than $60. After half a month of recovery, it continued to rise from around US$46 on October 13, reaching a stage high of US$139.92 in early November, and finally surged higher and lower at the end of the year, "bloodbathing" the contract market.

Such a project that was born in 2019 and half-dead for nearly 2 years suddenly came back to life in September last year, fluctuating all the way up, and turned into a long-short pair at the end of the year. Explosive "killer". When something goes wrong, there must be a monster.

4 months in ambush  The giant whale attracts funds and controls the market

After the "demon coin" released its demonic energy, the situation of the giant whale controlling the market gradually became clear.

In fact, on December 29, when TRB rose to $225, the on-chain data analysis tool Spot On Chain issued a reminder message, "In Of the 2.5 million $TRB in circulation, approximately 1.7 million are on exchanges, while 20 whales hold 660,000.”

Spot On Chain analyzed the data and also The holding whales accumulated TRB in August and September at a favorable price of $15, and since then the token’s price has increased 15 times, earning a total of $120 million (achieving a profit of $40 million, Unrealized earnings of $80 million). Over the past two months, whales have slowly deposited their tokens onto exchanges, creating a pump-and-sell cycle to liquidate their holdings.

Everyone who has experienced crypto-asset players in 2017 knows that when the chips are excessively concentrated in the hands of one or a few people, the tokens become the dealer. Tools for manipulating prices.

Spot On Chain suggested at the time that since most of the tokens were still in the hands of whales, they controlled the game. Prices may experience sharp increases to clear short positions and hard sell-offs to liquidate their holdings.

Spot On Chain's prompt finally came true. In the first 6 hours of the new year, TRB took a dive.

So, who are these whales controlling TRB chips?

Unfortunately, although the publicity of the blockchain address allows anyone to see the flow direction of assets, the anonymity of the blockchain does not allow The outside world knows the specific identity of the holder.

Someone pointed the trader to a crypto asset investment service provider. On social media, some people criticized LD Capital, which is familiar to many people in the Chinese currency circle.

In response to this, Lou Jiyue, a partner of LD Capital, responded on multiple social channels such as X, "Real-namely find any Binance account KYC information and LD If /myself/ and any of our affiliates provide information related to transaction costs and this wave of TRB price fluctuations, a reward of US$10 million is offered; otherwise, if the content of the information is disseminated with more than 3,000 views, we reserve the right to pursue relevant legal responsibilities Rights."

The reason for the accusation against Led Capital may be a report on TRB funding analysis released by the agency on August 28 last year. In fact, LD Capital mentioned in the report that some addresses were collecting TRB.

The report shows that large fluctuations were observed on the chain on August 21, which was the highest level since January this year and was much greater than the previous data. At the same time, the price did not fluctuate significantly and hovered around $10. “We believe that someone may be opening a position on the chain at this time.”

No address and identity Correspondingly, this report cannot be used as proof of the accusation of capital control, but the report does prove that TRB Whale is indeed accumulating funds at low points.

It is uncertain for whales to accumulate funds, but those who sell at high points have been caught.

On January 1, the on-chain analysis tool Lookonchain according to tracking data, a wallet address related to the Tellor Tributes development team was listed on TRB After the price surged, 4,211 TRB were transferred to the exchange Coinbase. At the price at the time, these TRBs were worth US$2.4 million.

Tellor team-related addresses have transferred TRB to Coinbase for many times style="text-align: left;">According to data on the chain, this address starting with 0x1B8 transferred 12,735 TRB to Coinbase in the month of December, and also received 20,000 TRB through Tellor's multi-signature .

According to this, the Tellor Tributes team cannot be ruled out profiting from TRB's highs.

And analyst @Riyad_carey  pointed out that the Tellor Tributes team deposited TRB into Coinbase a few hours before the price plummeted, but the sell-off on Binance was Coinbase was about 2 minutes early. But after the Tellor Tributes team deposited TRB into Coinbase for the second time, the market saw a $350,000 sell-off, causing the TRB price to drop from $500 to $400. In this regard, he believes that the Tellor Tributes team does not rule out liquidation, but the real whales that seriously manipulate prices are hidden in Binance.

This analysis also coincides with the data tracked by Spot On Chain. The whale address prompt collection data established by this tool shows that since September, Most of the TRB in the whale wallets went to Binance, the world's largest crypto asset exchange.

According to on-chain data, even today (January 5), a Binance address still ranks No. 1 among TRB holders One, with a total of 771,600 TRB, accounting for 29.82% of the total supply; the exchange with the second largest holdings is OKX, with a total of 189,700 TRB, accounting for 7.2%.

In addition, TRB in the top ten non-exchange whale addresses accounts for 24.85% of the total supply, about 642,900, and the chips are still concentrated.

Excessive leverage No one survived in the "casino"

Investors affected by the sudden rise and fall of TRB are not only scolding the giant whales hiding in the dark to control the market, but also expressing their dissatisfaction with the exchanges for allowing the whales to slaughter investors. Some users have called on Binance, Coinbase, OKX, etc. The exchange delisted this “stand-alone coin”.

After the incident, Binance took temporary measures and suspended TRB’s currency withdrawal service. However, as of press time, no exchange has yet delisted TRB.

The liquidation amount of more than 70 million has indeed caused heavy losses to many people, and excessive leverage trading in the market has actually contributed to the sudden rise and fall of TRB. It has played a role in fueling the flames.

As early as August, when Led Capital discovered that TRB had on-chain fund-raising behavior, it also discovered that TRB’s contract trading volume and open interest also appeared at that time. rise. On the morning of August 26 alone, TRB’s 24-hour contract trading volume increased by 151%, and contract positions increased by 93%. "The positions of large accounts are in a long state, and the account long-short ratio is 0.96, indicating that a large number of retail investors are short."

TRB recorded by Lide Capital on August 26 Contract market data

At that time, TRB’s trading volume was still US$30.5 million, and its open interest was US$12.8 million. On August 28, just 2 days later, TRB’s contract trading volume and open interest increased rapidly. “In the last 24 hours, its contract trading volume was US$1.6 billion and its open interest was approximately US$68 million.”

August is the stage when whales begin to accumulate funds. The rise in TRB prices has also begun to attract traders of futures contracts to enter the market. The positions in the TRB contract market have also begun to increase. Starting in August.

Changes in TRB contract positions in 2023 and liquidation data since October

According to common sense, no currency will continue to rise. However, TRB does not care about common sense. After entering October, the "Air Force" became a frequent customer of TRB during its rising period. By October 26, TRB, with a total market value of US$250 million, had a position of US$355 million in the contract market, with a funding rate of -1.38%.

After the continuous liquidation of short orders, some traders have smelled the crisis and gave up trading on TRB, while there are still some people who do not believe in evil. I always want to take a wave of short-selling profits at high points, but I always fail.

On December 29, before TRB hit $500, Myth, a Binance user who had shorted the token, recalled that he had traded at $35 I shorted TRB nearby and was lucky enough to survive a major correction. However, after I continued to try band shorting, my profits retraced nearly 80%, and I gave up on the target thereafter.

He speculated that the currency holders continued to suppress the currency by manipulating the price, and then used contract leverage to make profits. "If you are still playing contracts, it is best to stay away from this currency. Now the daily contract transaction volume of this token is more than 500 million U. It can only be said that there are really many gamblers."

Two days later, TRB surged higher within 6 hours and dived within 6 hours. Both the long and short positions exploded, leaving the contract market with no survivors.

Looking back, TRB, with a supply of only 2.58 million, is almost fully circulated. Under market conditions where the price itself is not high, it is easy to sell such crypto assets Being attracted by others at a low price. When the dealers have more and more chips in their hands, they almost have the right to draw the K-line, while the "closed-eyes players" in the contract market can only let it be slaughtered.

The "demon coin" TRB exists and can continue to exist after releasing its demonic energy, which once again proves the lack of investor protection in the crypto asset market. In such an environment, there is only one way for investors to protect themselves: to keep their eyes open and stay away from market targets that lack liquidity.