In the last days of December, a major upheaval in the crypto market was caused by the volatile trading of an altcoin called Tellor (TRB). The sudden fluctuations in Tellor’s value caused traders to lose large leveraged positions.
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On December 31, TRB’s value surged 150% in just 13 hours to reach $619, before quickly crashing back down to $136. Tellor’s team’s $2.4 million transfer to Coinbase coincided with the rapid rise in prices, which fueled speculation.
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
As TRB’s value fell, over $68 million in liquidations occurred, according to data from CoinGlass. Analyses revealed that 26% of TRB is concentrated in just 20 large wallets, which could be contributing to artificiality in price movements.
Tellor is a service token used for a decentralized oracle network, and the upheavals also affected decentralized trading protocols such as Synthetix (SNX). Synthetix stakers experienced losses due to the sudden change in TRB’s price.
🚨🚨 $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
Synthetix founder Kain Warwick highlighted the weaknesses in risk management in decentralized trading mechanisms, emphasizing the importance of strong risk control mechanisms. These events once again brought to light the risks in the crypto market and the challenges of decentralized trading.