- RaveDAO's token crashes 90%.
- Critics allege market manipulation.
- Binance and Bitget say they're investigating.
Crypto exchanges Binance and Bitget say they are investigating claims of market manipulation after the crypto token of a digital cooperative that organises electronic dance parties crashed some 90% over the weekend.
RaveDAO, which styles itself as a “community-driven global rave powerhouse,” has been active since late 2023. The group organises afterparties at crypto conferences and builds “community-raised local chapters,” according to its website.
At the beginning of April, RaveDAO’s token started shooting up in value without any obvious catalyst. By April 18, the token had gained 7,000%, briefly making it the 20th-largest cryptocurrency.
Less than two days later, the token crashed spectacularly, shedding most of its $5 billion market value in mere hours.
Now, critics are questioning how the previously niche project could soar to such a huge valuation so quickly and what brought about such an extreme crash, even by the standards of the hyper-volatile crypto market.
RaveDAO did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Pattern of manipulation
RaveDAO's rise and fall come amid mounting scrutiny of alleged crypto market manipulation.
In recent months, dozens of newly-launched tokens have roared to multi-billion dollar valuations, only to fall again just as quickly.
These tokens often follow a similar pattern. They start with only a handful of wallets controlling the vast majority of tokens, meaning only a small fraction of the overall supply can be bought and sold. The rest sits idle, locked up in wallets that are often controlled by the token’s creators.
Before the tokens soar, they are often listed for trading on major centralised crypto exchanges like Binance and Bitget. These exchanges don’t publicly share trading data, so it’s impossible to know who is buying and selling the crypto assets traded on them.
'We will always do our part to investigate all market misconduct' — Richard Teng
According to ZachXBT, a pseudonymous crypto sleuth famous in the industry for uncovering instances of foul play, the alleged Rave token pump-and-dump originated from three exchanges: Bitget, Binance, and Gate.
“We cannot allow this blatant market manipulation by insiders controlling >90% RAVE support to further extract from retail investors,” ZachXBT said on April 18.
The same day, Binance CEO Richard Teng and Bitget CEO Gracy Chen both said they had started investigating the alleged market manipulation on their respective exchanges.
“We will always do our part to investigate all market misconduct,” Teng wrote on X.
Gate did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Suspicious transactions
Some 75% of the entire Rave token supply sits in a single wallet controlled by the RaveDAO team, onchain records show.
Two more wallets connected to the main RaveDAO wallet held around 10% of the token’s supply, meaning that potentially 85% of the token’s entire supply couldn’t be bought or sold by traders.
The fewer Rave tokens there are on the market, the more large buys and sells can move the price.
Such a situation is strange for a so-called decentralised autonomous organisation, or DAO. These organisations are supposed to have no central leadership and are governed by distributing tokens to members, who use them to vote on proposals.
Critics say the small circulating supply of tokens is intentional.
They point to suspicious transactions that occurred immediately before the Rave token started to rally as evidence of a coordinated push to manipulate it.
To be sure, these are allegations that have not been proven.
On April 9, two wallets deposited 18 million Rave tokens to Bitget. A third wallet deposited another 12 million tokens on April 12 and 13. That’s about 2.5% of the token’s entire supply, or around a third of the tokens in circulation at the time.
Critics say this was done to bait traders into opening short positions. When wallets send large amounts of a token to a centralised exchange, it’s usually for one reason only: to sell them.
Yet shortly after the deposits, the Rave token began to rise.
As it rallied, a wallet connected to the RaveDAO team withdrew some 32 million tokens from Bitget. Naeven, a pseudonymous onchain investigator who has followed the case, told DL News he believes this was done to reduce the supply of tokens in circulation, making it easier to push the price higher.
The fact that a wallet controlled by the RaveDAO team made the withdrawal suggests they’re directly involved in the alleged manipulation, Naeven said.
RaveDAO has addressed accusations that its team members were behind the extreme price movements.
“We want to be clear: RaveDAO team is not engaged in, nor responsible for, recent price action,” the project said on April 18.
‘Low-quality tokens’
Industry insiders worry that crypto market manipulation and other illegal activities have become more widespread under US President Donald Trump’s administration.
Since Trump took office in January 2025, the Securities and Exchange Commission has closed at least a dozen cases against crypto firms, according to a January letter from House Democrats to SEC Chair Paul Atkins.
'Without proper synchronisation between platforms and regulators, the industry will face a new round of market instability' — Tracy Jin
In January, OKX CEO Star Xu publicly accused Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao of launching Ponzi-like schemes, amplifying “get-rich-quick” narratives, and directly or indirectly manipulating the prices of “low-quality tokens.”
Binance did not return a request for comment on Xu’s allegations.
In March 2025, MEXC, a Seychelles-based crypto exchange, said it had uncovered two coordinated groups of traders totalling 182 users engaged in market manipulation.
“Without proper synchronisation between platforms and regulators, the industry will face a new round of market instability,” Tracy Jin, MEXC’s chief operating officer, said of the discovery.
Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.
