OKX founder and CEO Mingxing “Star” Xu has pledged an additional $25,000 bounty to support on-chain investigator ZachXBT's probe into suspected market manipulation of the RAVE token. This comes after RAVE, associated with RaveDAO, experienced a catastrophic 95% crash from roughly $26 to near $1 in under two days, erasing billions in market value following an 11,000% rally.
ZachXBT has publicly accused insiders of orchestrating a "textbook pump and dump," alleging that wallets linked to the team and early distribution controlled 90–95% of RAVE's 1 billion token supply. He detailed that large transfers to exchanges preceded the surge, suggesting a coordinated effort to offload tokens onto retail buyers. The investigator has urged major exchanges including Binance, Bitget, and Gate to conduct internal probes and punish any employees involved.
The token's meteoric rise saw it jump from around $0.25 to approximately $27.33 in just 9-11 days, triggering roughly $44 million in liquidations (mostly short positions) and pushing its valuation toward $6 billion. The subsequent crash wiped out nearly that entire paper market cap on less than $52 million of liquidations, a mismatch ZachXBT argues "is not normal in a healthy market structure."
In response to the allegations, Bitget CEO Gracy Chen thanked ZachXBT and confirmed an investigation had begun, while Binance and Gate acknowledged similar review requests. RaveDAO has denied responsibility for the price action, even as the team recently revealed plans to sell portions of unlocked tokens to fund operations.
Adding to the token's woes, technical analysis indicates RAVE could be poised for another significant drop. Trading inside a descending channel on the hourly chart, a rejection at the upper boundary could see the price slide toward $0.30, implying a further 55–58% decline from current levels.
