BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes is going through one other spherical of exit liquidity allegations after on-chain observers flagged that his fund, Maelstrom, appeared to dump $1.92 million price of $CARDS tokens inside days of Hayes publicly selling the mission.
The transfer, which is acknowledged as utilizing others as “exit liquidity” to get out of a commerce, is coming simply roughly three weeks after blockchain investigator ZachXBT known as out Hayes for comparable actions that concerned 4 totally different tokens.
Why is Arthur Hayes getting criticized?
On June 23, Hayes posted on X that “$CARDS degens” had a “stable” thesis and predicted the token’s value could be “pamping,” in line with his publish on X. Maelstrom’s official account shared a hyperlink to the mission across the identical time, in line with a publish from the fund’s X account.
4 days later, crypto analytics account SolanaFloor reported on X that Hayes had set a $4 value goal for $CARDS when the token was buying and selling round $0.30 and that Maelstrom despatched $1.92 million price of $CARDS to market maker Flowdesk the next day. SolanaFloor added that it was “possible for promoting.”
That was all Crypto Twitter wanted to fireplace a barrage of posts and criticism on the socially energetic Arthur Hayes.
The token was buying and selling close to $0.23 on the time of SolanaFloor’s publish, a decline of roughly 23% from the place it sat when Hayes endorsed it. At present, it trades round $0.24
One other on-chain analyst, Ericonomic, additionally flagged the sequence on X, noting that Hayes “shilled $CARDS 4 days in the past” and that three days later an handle bought “his whole stack via Fireblocks.”
Ericonomic added that the pockets handle was by no means publicly disclosed by Hayes, and the hyperlink was primarily based on timing and token patterns.
What did ZachXBT name out Hayes?
On June 6, Cryptopolitan reported that ZachXBT confronted Hayes over an analogous cycle of endorsing tokens after which liquidating his holdings of these tokens. That point it concerned 4 tokens, $HYPE, $NEAR, $ZEC, and $WLD.
ZachXBT documented how Hayes exited all 4 positions inside a two-week window after publicly endorsing each.
Hayes had known as $HYPE, $ZEC, and $NEAR the “Holy Trinity” on Could 22, then went on to promote his $HYPE and $NEAR holdings by June 4 and dumped $ZEC on June 5 after citing an exploit in its Orchard Pool.
He additionally closed his $WLD place the subsequent day, lower than 24 hours after framing Worldcoin as a SpaceX IPO play.
ZachXBT requested Hayes instantly how a lot exit liquidity his followers had absorbed. Hayes responded that he “bought to a prepared vendor at a value” and that he “occurred to name it proper this time” relating to his buying and selling objectives.
ZachXBT’s historical past of flagging suspicious actions
ZachXBT has constructed a monitor file of flagging this sort of promote-then-sell dynamic throughout crypto.
His investigations into RAVE, SIREN, and $LAB tokens over the previous two months have all centered on the function insiders or outstanding figures play in producing retail shopping for curiosity after which promoting into the demand they created.
In a Could 14 investigation into $LAB, ZachXBT documented how insiders allegedly managed over 95% of the token’s provide whereas the mission reached a totally diluted valuation above $6 billion. He characterised that case as “all the things incorrect with the present meta of retail extraction on main centralized exchanges.”
Thus far, Hayes has not publicly responded to the most recent $CARDS allegations, and the connection between the Maelstrom fund pockets and the Flowdesk transfers has not been independently confirmed past what was cited by SolanaFloor and comparable sources.
