- Newly-discovered crypto whale acquires 314M BOME before Binance’s listing.
- Book Of Meme soars 22426% since inception but drops 51% days into listing.
- Binance’s on-chain sleuths offer a bounty ranging from $100K to $5M.
The cryptosphere witnessed a scandal after insider trading rumors surfaced about Book Of Meme (BOME), an emerging memecurrency with a $750 million market cap. Binance became one of the earliest centralized adopters of the BOME memecoin. On March 16, 2024, the crypto giant added support for BOME and Spot trading pairs for BOME/BTC, BOME/USDT, BOME/FDUSD and BOME/TRY.
Listed on the platform with an inspection tag called the Seed Tag, the Solana-based memecoin has been under a magnifying glass since day one. However, it fell into a scandal due to ‘Rat House’ allegations, which is a term used to describe insider trading. In response to this, Binance launched an internal investigation and urged crypto traders with relevant information to approach the team at audit@binance.com, according to Binance’s Chinese X account.
To speed up the investigative process, Binance has put up a bounty, ranging from $100K to $5 million, to collect the information relevant to fraudulent behavior. The scrupulous approach by Binance detectives returned no inside trading proof on the preliminary investigation, while the reward is given upon verification that a Binance staff member has exploited their status.
Here’s Why BOME Is Investigated for Insider Trading
Last Friday, hours before Binance’s listing announcement, a brand new cryptocurrency address was spotted to gain 12,721 SOL from a Binance withdrawal. Blockchain detective agency LookOnChain noticed that this fresh crypto wallet raised eyebrows due to purchasing 314M BOME tokens before BOME was listed on Binance.
Acquiring 314 million tokens for $0.0074 apiece, this whale now holds $4,076,024.20 worth of BOME on his Solana crypto wallet. While BOME’s price has significantly crashed since its all-time high on the listing day at $0.02689, the 51% drop since then still puts the fresh whale in a substantial profit.
After Binance’s primary investigation, no links to the top crypto exchange staff were found, and users were prompted to share information about incidents on the platform. As BOME’s status on Binance is under inspection with a monitoring tag, confirmed allegations of insider trading could potentially delist the coin.
On the Flipside
- Previously, insider trading in crypto has brought serious legal consequences, with crypto platforms usually taking a reputational hit.
- As seen in Ishan Wahi’s case, the former Coinbase product manager shared confidential information about token listings with his friends and relatives.
- Ending up with a two-year prison sentence, the former Coinbase product manager executed a similar insider trading scheme to OpenSea’s ex-homepage manager.
Why This Matters
Since blockchain has trackable traits, transparency is key to bolster retail crypto adoption, which is frequently stigmatized for alleged insider trading.
Explore DailyCoin’s popular crypto stories:
El Salvador’s Bitcoin Vault Reveals Way More BTC Than We Knew
Binance Celebrates Women’s Academy Success in IWD Redemption