Jessy, Golden Finance
According to common logic, the delisting of a token by an exchange is a significant bearish signal.
However, this pattern was not perfectly replicated with the ALPACA token that was delisted from Binance on May 2. Initially, when the news of ALPACA's delisting came on April 24, it did experience a brief drop, but then over the next three days, its price surged more than tenfold.
By April 30, the price had increased nearly 50 times from when the delisting was announced. According to Coinglass data, the liquidation amount of ALPACA tokens reached $50 million in the past 24 hours, surpassing Bitcoin.
And behind this absurd phenomenon is just a perfect harvest by the ALPACA dealer.
The dealer's manipulation against common sense, the lament of retail investors.
Around five days before Binance announced the delisting of ALPACA on April 24, the trading volume of the ALPACA token suddenly increased, and its price nearly doubled at its peak. At this point, it can be inferred that the dealer was accumulating positions at a low price before the delisting news was released.
When the delisting news was officially released on April 24, retail investors expected a price crash, and the long-short ratio reached 1:4, but the token's price did not drop as retail investors anticipated; instead, after a brief 30% decline, it began to rise.
The exchange also played an important role in this; Binance shortened the settlement period for contract funding rates from 8 hours to 1 hour. When the rate fell to -2%, it indicated that airdrops needed to pay high rates to short, and the high rates prompted short sellers to close their positions, causing the token's price to rise accordingly.
However, the fluctuations in the rate do not always affect the price movements of the ALPACA token at every moment.
ALPACA is always contrary to common sense, and it is precisely because of this contrariness that many traders make mistakes while trading according to 'rules', such as when Binance raised the ALPACA contract rate cap to ±4% on April 29. Originally, the increase in the rate cap would discourage short positions, and the token's price should have risen, but its price did not rise as it did on April 24; instead, it fell, directly losing 3/4 of its value.
By April 30, this game of back and forth between bulls and bears reached its peak, with the highest price in 24 hours being 20 times higher than the lowest price. On April 30 at 5 PM, Binance delisted the ALPACA contract, and ALPACA subsequently fell over 60% from its peak before starting to rise again.
In the past 24 hours, the largest liquidation of ALPACA occurred on Bybit, totaling $3.98 million. The liquidation volume of ALPACA contracts also topped the list.
Summary:
The most intriguing aspect of this incident is that the dealer and the news's coordination was too perfect, leaving retail investors baffled. Moreover, the exchange itself has also, to some extent, become an accomplice in this.
For example, Binance's adjustment of the contract rate seemingly aimed at maintaining market stability, but this time it was exploited by manipulators. On April 29, Binance raised the ALPACA rate to ±4%, originally intended to deter short sellers, but the price instead fell, while the open interest rose.
The dealer undoubtedly took advantage of this news, catching retail investors off guard. This also indicates that exchanges need to be more cautious in rule-making and adjustments, fully considering various possible situations to avoid giving market manipulators an opportunity.
This incident also exposed that retail investors are merely toys that can be harvested at any time by the dealer; wanting to dance with the dealer is akin to being bloodied by a knife.
