A relatively unknown altcoin called Tellor (TRB) has been thrust into the community spotlight after surging nearly 150% to a new all-time high of $619 before plummeting back to $136 in just 13 hours on Dec. 31.
The price of Tellor spiked then plunged amid allegations of market manipulation. Source: TradingView
The unusual trading activity of Tellor was further called into question after Etherscan data showed the Tellor team had transferred 4,211 TRB — worth roughly $2.4 million at the time — at around 8:41 pm UTC to a Coinbase wallet just as the price spiked.
Meanwhile, the sudden drop in the price of Tellor caused more than $68 million in liquidations, according to data from CoinGlass that was later cited by blockchain analytics services Lookonchain in a Jan. 1 post to X (formerly Twitter).
In the past 24 hours, $TRB soared to $600 and then plummeted to $137, causing $68M of assets to be liquidated, making it the most liquidated token.
We noticed that the #Tellor team deposited 4,211 $TRB($2.4M) after the price of $TRB skyrocketed.
Address:https://t.co/efHPXCiMiG pic.twitter.com/IBty2Wf2gI
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) January 1, 2024
Blockchain analytics platform Spot on Chain however said that the wild price swings could also be attributed to 95% of the circulating supply of TRB being distributed between just 20 “whale” wallets.
The small group of whale addresses began snapping up TRB at prices near $15 and has been gradually depositing their holdings to centralized exchanges amid seemingly artificial price movements to lock in higher profits, said Spot On Chain.
$TRB reached its all-time high today at $225, but what’s next?
Current situation:
➡️ Among the 2.5M $TRB in circulation, about 1.7M is on exchanges, and 660K is held by a group of 20 whales (which is ~95% of the tokens).
➡️ The group of whales accumulated these tokens in… pic.twitter.com/kWbZGxEqcv
— Spot On Chain (@spotonchain) December 29, 2023
Cointelegraph contacted Tellor for comment but did not receive a response by press time.
TRB is the utility token for Tellor, a decentralized oracle network — similar to Chainlink (LINK)…
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