Article author: VannaCharmer Article compilation: Block unicorn

In the token market, Perception is everything. Like Plato's cave fable, many investors are trapped in the shadows—misleading by the distorted illusion of value by malicious actors. This article will reveal how VC-funded projects systematically manipulate token prices, with specific methods including:

Maintain the token's "false flow" as much as possible.

Compress "real flow" as much as possible (REAL Float, easy to pull the disk).

Use the fact that the real circulation is extremely low to raise the price of its tokens.

No, I am not a low circulation/high FDV token! I am "community number one"

Earlier this year, the surge in Meme coins left VC tokens out of favor, which was called "low circulation/high FDV" tokens. With the rise of platforms such as Hyperliquid, many VC tokens have become uninvested targets. However, these projects did not correct the shortcomings of their token economics or focus on developing actual products, but instead increased the artificial control of circulation while claiming the exact opposite.

Downloading circulation is extremely beneficial to the project party because it makes price manipulation a breeze. For example: the foundation uses locked tokens to cash out through behind-the-scenes transactions and then repurchases it in the open market, which has extremely high funding efficiency. At the same time, extremely low real circulation will make the token price extremely easy to manipulate, causing short sellers and leveraged traders to face extreme risks.

The following are several typical cases (incomplete list):

This is the most blatant case. A TVL project with only $4 million, and FDV exceeds $10 billion? The answer is simple: they control the vast majority of the $OM circulation. Mantra GroupThe team stored 792 million OMs (90% of the total) in a single wallet, and was too lazy to even cover up the dispersed position.

When I questioned @jp_mullin888, he argued that it was a "mirror storage wallet" and it was pure nonsense.

So how to calculate the true circulation of Mantra?

We can calculate it by:

980 million (claimed circulation) - 792 million (the part controlled by the team) = 188 million OM

This 188 million OM number may not be accurate. The team still holds a considerable portion of OMs, and they also manipulate airdrops through Sybil to further reduce real circulation. They used about 100 million OM to fake airdrops, and this part would also need to be deducted.

The end of the real circulation is only 88 million OM (assuming that the team does not control more, but this assumption is likely to be wrong). By this calculation, this makes Mantra’s real circulating market capitalization of only $526 million, which is very different from the $6.3 billion shown by CoinMarketCap.

Extremely low real circulation allows the team to easily manipulate OM prices and lose short positions. The team controls most of the circulation and can raise and lower prices at will. Retail investors short OM as if they bet on Dogecoin with @DWFLabs. I suspect Tritaurian Capital (@SOMA_finance (@jp_mullin888 is the co-founder of SOMA, owned by JPM's boss Jim Preissler) to a $1.5 million company) and some funds and market makers in the Middle East, as well as some funds and market makers, may be behind the current price trend. This further tightens the real circulation volume, making it more difficult to calculate.

The airdrop collection of this project offers two options: collect the airdrop on the ETH main network, or collect it on its unlisted chain (with small rewards). However, after a few hours of receiving the collection, the team suddenly:

added a high fee of 0.015 ETH (approximately $56) to ETH mainnet recipients (excluding Gas fees), forcing small test network users to give up.

Cut the ETH mainnet allocation by more than 80%, but retains high fees.

Suspend collection.

Sets a very short collection deadline.

The results are obvious: only 58.7 million MOVEs were collected, accounting for 5% of the planned airdrop (1 billion).

According to CoinMarketCap data, MOVE claims to have a circulation of 2.45 billion pieces.

However, according to Move's pie chart, the tokens circulated after airdrop collection should be only 2 billion (basic + initial airdrop collection), so the suspicious trick starts here, as the 450 million MOVE is missing.

245 million MOVE (professional circulating volume) - 1 billion MOVE (funded distribution) - 941 million MOVE (unreceived portion) = 509 million MOVE or 203 million US dollars of real circulation

The real circulation is only 20% of the claimed circulation! Moreover, it is hard for me to believe that the 509 million MOVE is all in the hands of retail investors., but let's assume that this is the real circulation.

What did Movement Labs do during this period of extremely low true circulation?

Pay WLFI (market maker) to buy its own tokens

Pay REX-Osprey, and ask them to apply for ETFs for MOVE (pure gimmicks)

Rushi (project member) went to the New York Stock Exchange to make a show

Collaborated with funds and market makers to sell locked tokens in exchange for cash, so that they could pull the market

The team deposited 150 million yuan at the Bybit high point MOVE, which may then start selling (the token price has been falling since then)

TGE (token generation event), pay a KOL company $700,000 a month so that they can list on Binance and get more exit liquidity in Asia

In Rushi's words: "We are just playing a game."

Kaito It is the only project mentioned in this article that has actual products, but there are similar problems with their current airdrop allocation method.

As CBB pointed out, only a few people received the airdrops from Kaito after they were issued, which also affected the real circulation. Let's calculate it:

According to data from Coinmarketcap, Kaito's circulation is 241 million pieces, or 314 million US dollars. I assume this number includes: Binance holders, liquidity incentives, foundation allocations and initial community and airdrop collection.

Let's split it up and see what the real real circulation is:

Real real circulation =241 million KAITO-68 million (unreceived part) +100 million (foundation holdings) = 73 million KAITO

The real circulation market value is only US$94.9 million, which is much lower than the CMC data.

Kaito is the only partly trusted among the three projects in this article, because they have at least profitable products, and as far as I know, their operations are not as bad as Movement and Mantra.

CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko should display the real circulation of tokens, not data compiled by the project party. Exchanges such as Binance should take measures to punish such behavior. The current listing mechanism has been broken - like Movement, paying KOL companies can swipe data and cheat listings in Asia.

Traders please stay away from these tokens, because the project party can control the price at will. They control all circulation, and they control the token trend (non-financial advice).