Three wallets, one denial, and $5.7 billion in market cap gone in 48 hours.
RaveDAO’s RAVE crashed 90% over 24 hours as crypto exchanges Binance and Bitget opened investigations into the buying and selling exercise that catapulted the token to a $6 billion market cap final week.
Bitget CEO Gracy Chen confirmed the probe on X, and Binance co-CEO Richard Teng subsequently stated the alternate was reviewing the matter and would “always” do its half to look at indicators of market misconduct. Gate.io was additionally named within the authentic allegations from onchain investigator ZachXBT, who has provided a $25,000 bounty for whistleblowers with proof of the events concerned.
The collapse accelerated after the venture’s Saturday denial slightly than stabilizing on it.
RaveDAO posted a six-part X thread stating the workforce “is not engaged in, nor responsible for, recent price action.”
The thread didn’t handle any of the particular onchain allegations that prompted the scrutiny, together with the focus of roughly 90% of the 1 billion RAVE provide throughout three Gnosis Protected multi-signature wallets attributed to the workforce, or the hundreds of thousands of tokens transferred to exchanges shortly earlier than the rally started.
The unique rally took RAVE from about $0.25 to $27.33 in 9 days, a ten,800% transfer that triggered $44 million in liquidations on Friday, simply behind bitcoin and ether, with the majority of them from quick sellers positioned in opposition to the token.
Investigators flagged a “bait and liquidate” sample through which seen token transfers to exchanges advised incoming promote stress, drawing merchants into quick positions earlier than these tokens had been withdrawn and costs ripped greater, forcing shorts to cowl at progressively worse ranges.
RaveDAO presents itself as a Web3 leisure platform providing onchain ticketing for digital music occasions, tracing its origins to a 2023 Istanbul afterparty. The venture reported about $3 million in 2025 income and lists partnerships with Binance, OKX, Bitget, and Polygon.
RaveDAO’s thread did affirm the workforce plans to “liquidate portions of unlocked tokens” when applicable to fund operations and advertising and marketing, and stated it was “exploring appropriate models, including price-triggered or performance-triggered locks, that tie team incentives to ecosystem growth.”
It didn’t decide to any particular lockup mechanism or timeline, nonetheless.
