I recently saw the event of the RAVE cryptocurrency collapse, which is truly the most outrageous manipulation case in the market. This project, claiming to be a Web3 music platform, saw its token price skyrocket from $0.25 to $28.63 in just 9 days, an increase of over 10,000%, then plummeted over 90% overnight. The current price has fallen to just over $1, with a market cap of only around 250 million.

What’s even more absurd is that several major exchanges and on-chain detectives discovered issues. It is said that 90% of the tokens are locked in the official wallet, yet just before the price surge, a large amount of tokens quietly moved into exchanges, creating a false impression of "liquidation" and enticing retail investors to short. As a result, the official suddenly ramped up the price violently, liquidating all the short sellers, and a $44 million liquidation wave was instantly triggered.

The official later issued a statement trying to clarify, but it did not directly address investors’ core concerns nor provide specific lock-up commitments. This is a typical "bait-and-kill" manipulation pattern. This crypto crash exposed how many unregulated projects are still out there. It seems we need to be more cautious of tokens that experience such wild price swings.