On April 1, the prices of about ten low-cap coins, including ACT, DEXE, and HIPPO, plummeted, with some dropping as much as 50%, catching the attention of market watchers.
What’s going on?
— Vladislav 🥃 (@v_poltavetss) April 1, 2025
Wintermute is dumping assets from wallets where they acted as market makers. Either they got hacked — or something else is going on. No clear explanation yet.
Strange things happening:$ACT dropped 50% in minutes, ~10 tokens crashing while the market is… pic.twitter.com/PNWqsRAnSD
“Wintermute is dumping assets from wallets where they acted as market makers. Either they’ve been hacked, or something else is going on. There’s no clear explanation yet,” one user wrote.
X-account The Data Nerd, citing Arkham data, confirmed that Wintermute had sold off meme tokens such as ACT, MUBARAK, TUT, BABYDOGE, and others.
Trader DJJ suggested that the crash was triggered by the forced liquidation of Wintermute’s leveraged long positions due to newly implemented leverage and margin restrictions on certain perpetual options on Binance.
The resulting drop in contract prices and widening spreads led to automated arbitrage, increasing spot trading volumes and exacerbating the crash, which in turn caused market panic.
Another user, Daniele, speculated that the market maker might have been unwinding positions due to its collaboration with World Liberty Financial regarding the announced USD1 stablecoin.
If you're wondering what is Wintermute doing right now here is my 2 cents:
— Daniele 🟧 ( Degen Arc ) (@danielesesta) April 1, 2025
We saw that Wintermute interacted with USD1 the strablecoin from World Liberty Financial.
That being a major deal for them, they are derisking all assets that might be non-compliant or non-matching the…
“Since this is a major deal for them, they are de-risking all assets that may not comply with regulations or align with their new institutional brand strategy,” he stated.
“Bring Back the Green Candles!”
Wintermute’s competitors seized the opportunity to attract affected projects. Algorithmic market maker Vortex invited them to reach out following the “insanely huge dump.”
DWF Labs CEO Andrei Grachev pledged to allocate funds for buybacks and develop recovery plans for the impacted assets.
If your project has been affected by this weird dump, reach out to us.
— Andrei Grachev (@ag_dwf) April 1, 2025
We are ready to allocate funds for a buy back and strategize a recovery plan for your token. @DWFLabs and our cash are here for help
We need to get God Green Candles back
LFG!
“We need to bring back the ‘green candles of the gods.’ Let’s go!” he wrote.
“This Is Insane”
Wintermute founder Evgeny Gaevoy denied the company’s involvement in the market crash.
This is the psych ward
— Cobie (@cobie) April 1, 2025
In response to a comment calling the situation “insane,” he quoted Rorschach from Watchmen:
“It’s not me who’s locked in here with you. You’re locked in here with me.”
Earlier in March, Binance took action against an unknown market maker for manipulating the price of the MOVE token.
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