🚨 How did market manipulators use this news to complete their final harvesting?
Today, I will use $ALPACA as an example to explain the tactics of market manipulators to newcomers and beginners.
1⃣ Layout before delisting: Binance officially announced on April 24, 2025, that it would delist multiple tokens, including Alpaca.
The project party actually knew the delisting results in advance and had already been accumulating large amounts since the 19th, not only in Binance spot but also through on-chain addresses to conceal their holdings. For example, ALPACA's on-chain data showed a range of $0.022-$0.025 before the crash.
Large buy orders accumulate funds, laying the foundation for subsequent price pumps. You can understand this by looking at Binance's volume and K-line starting from the 19th.
2⃣ Misalignment of market expectations and game logic.
1) The "bear trap" of the delisting news.
When the project party received Binance's "death sentence," the market generally expected the price to plummet. Retail investors and speculators would rush into short positions based on this consensus, causing the contract funding rate to quickly turn negative (shorts have to pay interest to longs).
For example, after ALPACA was announced to be delisted, its perpetual contract rate once fell to -2%/2 hours, leading to a surge in short position costs. 2) The manipulability of low market cap tokens.
Delisted tokens often have extremely low market capitalizations (for instance, ALPACA's circulating market cap was only $5.9 million before delisting), allowing small amounts of capital to significantly raise the price. Speculators take advantage of market panic to buy at low prices, and then create a short squeeze through concentrated buying, forcing shorts to cover at high prices. ALPACA soared from $0.029 to $0.217 within 24 hours, an increase of over 600%, directly breaking through the short stop-loss line and completing the first round of harvesting.
3⃣ Profit paths for project parties/speculators.
1) Bi-directional harvesting: Spot accumulation and contract rate arbitrage.
* Spot market: Speculators buy tokens at low prices during the panic sell-off triggered by the delisting announcement, then pump the price to create a "dead cat bounce" market, attracting trend-following investors to sell at high prices.
* Contract market: Utilizing negative fee rate mechanisms, continuously collecting interest payments from shorts by holding large long positions. For example, ALPACA's contract rate accumulated to -24% over 24 hours, meaning that a short position with ten times leverage would need to pay 240% interest cost after holding for just one day.
2) Information asymmetry and liquidity traps.
As mentioned in the first point, the project party was already aware before delisting and carried out large buy orders in advance to lay the groundwork for subsequent price pumps. Additionally, the liquidity in the exchange has dried up, and the delisted tokens lack trading depth on other platforms, further amplifying price volatility, allowing speculators to easily manipulate the market.
4⃣ Deep-seated issues in the industry ecosystem.
1) The interests of market makers are tied to those of the project parties.
Some market makers profit from their "dual role": on one hand, they obtain tokens from project parties under the guise of maintaining liquidity, and on the other hand, they manipulate the market through selling off or pumping the price. For example, Whisper market makers profited $5 million through concentrated token sell-offs while harvesting retail investors via contract fee mechanisms.
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