DappRadar analysts suspected Yuga Labs of insider trading

A surge in the volume of CryptoPunks tokens trading occurred the day before the appointment of a former employee of the auction house Christie's as the brand manager of the project

21.06.2022 - 15:05

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What’s new? Analysts at aggregator platform DappRadar reported that Yuga Labs may have been involved in insider trading of NFTs from the CryptoPunks collection, the rights to which the company bought in March 2022. Experts point to a surge in token trading volume from June 17 to June 18. According to researchers, the spike in volume occurred 24 hours before the head of digital sales at Christie's auction house, Noah Davis, announced on Twitter that he was leaving his post to join the CryptoPunks project team as brand lead.

Information on the DappRadar blog

What does the blog say? CryptoPunks trading volume increased by 779% in 24 hours, despite the fact that at that moment the quotes on the market were rapidly declining. In dollar terms the volume of sales grew from $1,03 to $8,1 million. The number of unique buyers increased from 16 to 72 in the same period, and total transaction volume jumped 619%, from 16 to 115.

What is known about Yuga Labs? This is a startup that created one of the most expensive NFT collections, the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC). In March, Yuga Labs also bought the rights to the CryptoPunks and Meebits collections. In May, the company launched the Otherside metaverse and the Otherdeed collection of non-fungible tokens. The company's project governance token is ApeCoin (APE). As of June 21, 15:00 UTC, the asset is trading at $4,71, having gained 4,57% in a day, according to the Binance exchange.

What is known about DappRadar? It is an analytics service that provides data on decentralized applications (dApps), DeFi-protocols, NFT and blockchain games. The platform collects data on 27 blockchains, including Ethereum, EOS, TRON, IOST, Loom, Ontology and ThunderCore.

In early June, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) accused Nathaniel Chastain, a former product manager at NFT marketplace OpenSea, of insider trading. His job tasks included selecting collections to post on the platform's homepage. Using this information, he bought tokens in advance and then sold them at increased prices.

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