Have you ever encountered a MEME where the price goes from chasing the rally to zero, and cutting losses leads to a takeoff? How exactly do the market makers manipulate the market? Are there any insider addresses among the top 100 holders? How can one avoid being exploited by the market makers? This article will deeply analyze the addresses and transaction data of several types of tokens to uncover the market manipulation tactics.
What are the main purposes of market manipulation?
Before analyzing the manipulation tactics, we need to clarify the main purposes of pumping and dumping. The purpose of the KOLs pumping the price is to prevent low-priced tokens from falling into the hands of others, so that they can sell at a higher price and obtain higher profits. The purpose of dumping has several aspects: 1) to wash out other low-priced tokens and accumulate them themselves, then quickly offload the high-priced tokens; 2) simply "I'm not doing this anymore!" and run away with the money.
Since this is the purpose, the price increase must be extremely rapid. How can one achieve an extremely rapid price increase? Only large buy orders can achieve an extremely rapid price increase. Therefore, during the price pumping, there will be one or more addresses with unified behavior making relatively large buy orders. If you see two addresses continuously buying in amounts of at least $1,000, this is called price pumping. So when looking for the KOL addresses, you can filter for buy orders greater than $1,000, and the primary traded token of that address is likely the one being pumped.
Similarly, how can the KOLs collect the initial low-priced tokens? They must quickly snipe the lowest prices at the very beginning to absorb the majority of the tokens. So by looking at the earliest transaction records, you can generally see all the actions of the KOLs accumulating the low-priced tokens.
Types of MEMEs
Now that we understand the main purposes of MEME price pumping and dumping, we can distinguish different types of MEMEs based on the KOLs' mindset.
One-time Pump
It can be said that 90% of the MEMEs on the market belong to this type. The current market is different from a year ago, as with the launch of Pump, launching a token no longer requires high time and monetary costs - just fill in the token name, website, Twitter, and pay 0.02 SOL, and a token can be issued. So most token issuers are just trying to ride the hype and feel the market. In Pump, thousands of tokens can be issued in a single day, making it impossible for each token to have the capital to support multiple price pumps. So most MEMEs are one-time pumps.
For example, the token "Birds" was issued in less than 25 minutes, its market cap plummeted from $2.2 million to $100,000, and it has not seen any fluctuations since then.
DEV Exit, KOLs Enter
MEME is an emotional market, and a good narrative is an indispensable condition for a 100x token. When a one-time pump DEV cashes out, some KOLs will lie in ambush, absorbing these tokens at low prices, and then release some positive news to revive the token.
For example, in this token, the DEV exited at the peak, and the token's market cap plummeted from $2.4 million to a low of $260,000. During this period, the KOLs continuously accumulated tokens, established a CTO community, and kept promoting on Twitter, eventually reviving the token.
Of course, don't forget that the KOLs are in it to make money, so the token will always have the risk of being dumped, just like BOGGS - the DEV exited on the first day, and a few days later, the KOLs stepped in, started building a CTO community, and pumped the market cap to $4 million within a week, only to then suddenly dump and exit.
DEV is the KOL
These tokens are mostly issued by large institutions or KOLs, who create the token and play with it themselves, just like the previously viral Desci tokens PRO and ANTI, where the DEV did not sell, but used operations, narratives, and capital to pump the price.
KOLs' Manipulation Tactics
Now that we have a basic understanding of the MEME types, let's look at the KOLs' manipulation tactics.
One-time Pump Tactics
Let's take BOGGS as an example to look at the one-time pump tactics. In BOGGS, we can see that the KOLs will snipe buy the token at the opening. In the period after the token launch, there are also two addresses that simultaneously buy the token, with a purchase value of $367.24 each.
Tracking these addresses, we find that the snipe buy was done by the DEV address. Examining the DEV address, we find that it only has one buy and one sell transaction.
But when we shift our attention to the two addresses below, we find that these are the real KOL addresses. They bought in immediately after the opening, and continuously bought and sold, constantly accumulating at the lows and offloading at the highs, ultimately making a profit of $3,000.
At this point, we realize that while the DEV only made $200 in profit, the KOLs actually made $3,000.
If we use our meme-catcher analysis tool, we will find that all three addresses have extremely strong correlations.
DEV Manipulation Tactics and Secondary Pump
For the secondary pump, let's use qAI as an example. On the surface, the qAI DEV appears to have not moved, but in reality, they have been operating extensively. When we look at the top earning traders, we can easily find that the KOLs' alt accounts have been constantly offloading from the first pump to the second pump.
And when the price crashed to the bottom after the first dump, another address appeared, continuously buying in during the bottoming process, and then offloading as the price reached $2 million in market cap.
We can see that the KOLs were accumulating from 1.3 days prior, and on 1.4 days, qAI released a video outlining their vision, causing qAI to bottom out and start a gradual uptrend. Then in the early morning of 1.6 days, they pumped the price.
During the price pump, the qAI KOLs were also constantly offloading, eventually stabilizing the market cap around $1 million from the peak of $2.3 million.
It can be seen that the market maker's operation is not only to buy low and sell high, but also to cooperate with information to operate the market. They release positive news to attract funds.
Through the meme-catcher analysis tool, we found that the related addresses are 3 and 2 respectively, and the top 100 accounts for 91.38%. It can be seen how terrifying the KOL's stock accumulation is.
Finally
In the meme market, one thing needs to be remembered, meme is always an emotional market, when the emotion bursts, it is easy to chase the rise, and when panic, it is easy to cut the meat. The market maker is against human nature, they will continue to unload at the high point, and at the low point, they will continue to accumulate stocks. When the stock is sufficient, the KOL will release positive news and use new addresses to pull up the market to attract funds into the market, and then repeat the process of selling high and buying low, ultimately achieving considerable profits.
