Crypto market maker Gotbit came under fire after selling $4 million worth of WATER tokens, which intensified the token’s 70% price drop.
Market maker Gotbit, founded by Russian trader Alexey Andryunin, was identified as one of the entities responsible for the dramatic 70% price crash of WaterCoin (WATER) shortly after the token debuted on decentralized exchanges.
Is the #WaterCoin team selling $WATER?
We noticed that the dev transferred 844.44M $WATER to 11 new wallets that didn’t participate in the pre-sale.
These 11 wallets are selling $WATER and have obtained more than 18,600 $SOL($2.35M) by selling $WATER! pic.twitter.com/PWItcb06RN
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) June 24, 2024
In an X post on Jun. 24, blockchain researchers at Lookonchain alleged that wallets associated with the WaterCoin team began aggressively selling WATER as soon as trading started on decentralized exchanges.
On-chain analysts are worried about the “team” sales of $WATER tokens. However, most of these sales were conducted by Gotbit as part of MM operations. Why did we sell and what GHF is doing with $4M profits from these sales?
Read in the thread below pic.twitter.com/zI6QhWsroQ
— Gotbit Hedge Fund (@gotbit_io) June 27, 2024
However, in a Jun. 27 post on X, Gotbit revealed that it was responsible for selling the WATER tokens as the token’s price plummeted, adding that the team made $4 million “as part of market-making operations.” In its defense, Gotbit implied that WATER wasn’t supposed to surge so quickly, attributing the initial price spike to “several independent snipers.”
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“Some of them incurred losses due to Gotbit’s active selling. We took the money from the snipers and used it to support the price for 2-3x from the presale!”
Gotbit
However, in a follow-up post, Gotbit took a quick U-turn, saying that its role as a market maker was to provide “equal opportunities for all presale investors,” which is why the firm rapidly “lowered the price to a fair level.”
“The large WATER community could have mistakenly bought the token at an FDV [fully diluted value] of 1B+ before presale investors received their tokens, potentially facing a -90% loss afterward. To protect the community, we lowered the price to a fair level.”
Gotbit
Gotbit, previously known for faking trade volumes on crypto exchanges, claimed it began “supporting the price and providing liquidity to sellers” after reaching the presale metrics, assuring the public that the trades caused “no harm to the WATER community.”
Despite the firm’s claims, the price of WATER remains 88% below its debut value as of Jun. 26. The WaterCoin team has made no public statements regarding the trading practices, appearing unfazed by the market turmoil.
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