Three wallets, one rejection, and a $5.7 billion market cap gone in 48 hours.
RaveDAO $rave Cryptocurrency exchanges Binance and BitGet plunged 90% in 24 hours last week as they began investigating trading activity that drove the token’s market cap to $6 billion.
Bitget CEO Gracy Chen acknowledged the investigation into X, and Binance co-CEO Richard Teng later said the exchange is considering the matter and will “always” do its part to investigate any signs of market misconduct. Gate.io was also named in the original complaint by on-chain investigator ZachXBT, who is offering a $25,000 reward to a whistleblower with evidence of implication.
After the plan was denied on Saturday, the collapse accelerated rather than stabilized.
RaveDAO posted a six-part X thread stating that the team was “not involved in or responsible for recent price actions.”
The thread makes no mention of the specific on-chain allegations that sparked the scrutiny, including about 90% of the $1 billion being concentrated. $rave Supply spread across three Gnosis Safe multi-signature wallets attributed to the team, or millions of tokens transferred to exchanges just before the rally began.
The original rally $rave From about $0.25 to $27.33 in nine days, a 10,800% move on Friday led to $44 million in liquidations, second only to Bitcoin and Ethereum, with most of the liquidations from short sellers taking positions against the token.
Investigators flagged a “bait and liquidation” pattern in which visible transfers of tokens to exchanges signal the arrival of selling pressure, drawing traders into short positions before those tokens are withdrawn and prices rise, forcing the shorts to cover at progressively worsening levels.
RaveDAO has established itself as a Web3 entertainment platform offering on-chain ticket sales for electronic music events, with its origins dating back to the 2023 Istanbul afterparty. The project reports approximately $3 million in revenue in 2025 and lists partnerships with Binance, OKX, Bitget, and Polygon.
The RaveDAO thread confirmed that the team plans to “liquidate a portion of the unlocked tokens” when appropriate to fund operations and marketing, and said it is “exploring appropriate models, including locking price or performance triggers, that tie the team’s incentives to ecosystem growth.”
However, we did not commit to any specific lockup mechanism or timeline.
