to leave a comment.
The cryptocurrency industry's 'on-chain detective' ZachXBT (@zachxbt) is once again shaking up the market. Operating anonymously since 2021 and tracking hundreds of millions of dollars in hacks, scams, and market manipulation, he recently targeted $RAVE (RaveDAO) and $M (MemeCore) tokens, one after another, raising suspicions of 'insider manipulation.' In this process, Korean and Chinese KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) are strongly protesting, escalating into a community war.
ZachXBT is an anonymous on-chain investigator. He uses a platypus character as his avatar and introduces himself as "from scam victim to 2D detective." He specializes in uncovering fraud patterns by analyzing blockchain transaction flows, wallet addresses, and centralized exchange (CEX) deposit/withdrawal records. He is known to have contributed to victims recovering $300-500 million through hundreds of investigations, and recently joined major foundations like Paradigm VC, BNB Chain, and Arbitrum as an Incident Response Advisor. Major foreign media outlets like Wired describe him as "the world's most active independent crypto detective."
The incident began on April 18 (2026). ZachXBT revealed his investigation findings on the $RAVE token via X (formerly Twitter). The core claims are as follows:
$RAVE was launched in December 2025 on Binance Alpha with a total supply of 1 billion tokens. However, wallets connected to the RaveDAO deployer control 90-95% of the total supply, and the circulating supply is only about 24% of the total. On-chain data shows that these wallets transferred approximately 18.55 million $RAVE (worth about $19 million) to Bitget about 10 hours before the price surge, and an additional 29.78 million tokens were withdrawn during the rally.
As a result, $RAVE surged thousands of percent from $0.25 to a peak of $28 in just one week, only to collapse below $1 after ZachXBT's exposé, plummeting over 95% from its peak. Futures liquidations within 24 hours alone amounted to approximately $30.6 million.
ZachXBT stated that "retail investors incurred massive losses" and urged Binance's He Yi and Bitget CEO Gracy Chen to initiate internal investigations and remove those responsible. He also increased the bounty for informants from an initial $10,000 to $25,000. Bitget CEO Gracy Chen immediately responded, saying she had "started an investigation," and Binance is also reportedly investigating.
Even before the $RAVE controversy subsided, on April 20, ZachXBT targeted MemeCore ($M) as his next target.
He directly asked on X, "Present even one data point to support a $6B market cap as a top 20 token. And explain why insiders hold over 90% of the supply." Analysis by blockchain data visualization platform Bubblemaps also confirmed that M token holdings are concentrated in a few wallets. However, ZachXBT has not yet publicly posted conclusive on-chain data proving insider control of over 90%.
Allegations related to Kraken were also raised. ZachXBT claimed that during Kraken's spot listing of $M on July 3, 2025, suspicious withdrawals of approximately $7.9 million were made to 18 newly created addresses on Kraken immediately after the listing. He also alleged that wallets presumed to belong to MemeCore team members transferred millions of $M to Kraken deposit addresses immediately after the TGE (Token Generation Event). Furthermore, he pointed out the discrepancy that MemeCore's biggest achievement, in-app trading volume, is only about $66 million, while its market cap is in the billions of dollars.
ZachXBT also directly mentioned, "I wondered why Chinese and Korean KOL grifters were angry at my recent posts." For reference, MemeCore's market cap on April 21 varies across trackers, with CoinMarketCap showing approximately $4.3 billion (21st) and CoinGecko showing approximately $6 billion (20th).
In response to ZachXBT's targeting, the MemeCore community and Korean/Chinese KOLs immediately launched a counterattack.
The MemeCore team hastily launched a 'Fifty Shades of $M' event, offering a total of $100,000 worth of $M in airdrops to those who quote ZachXBT's posts and share photos/videos of offline events. Korean KOLs responded by extensively promoting actual offline activities, such as the 'HALLO MEME' event which rented out Lotte World during last year's KBW (Korea Blockchain Week), the Memekathon hackathon, and a Hong Kong Consensus VVIP dinner.
Some Korean community users expressed strong opinions, stating, "If you touch MemeCore, it's like turning Korea and China into enemies," and "As someone who first introduced MemeCore to Korea, don't touch it." MemeCore appears to be leveraging ZachXBT's criticisms as an opportunity for community cohesion and marketing.
$RAVE effectively collapsed after ZachXBT's exposé. $M has held up without a major crash so far, but controversies over concentrated insider supply and low actual circulating supply persist.
ZachXBT mentioned that similar suspicious patterns are found in several other tokens besides $RAVE and $M, including SIREN, MYX, COAI, PIPPIN, and RIVER, and announced further investigations. He also directly criticized CEXs for their due diligence issues, stating that "large exchanges ignore these red flags from the beginning and list them."
This incident goes beyond mere personal FUD, once again bringing to the surface structural trust issues in the meme coin 2.0 era. At the same time, it served as an opportunity to show how strong the cohesion of the Korean and Chinese communities and their ability to mobilize offline events can be as a defense mechanism.
Who will be ZachXBT's next target, and can MemeCore provide satisfactory answers to the raised allegations? This incident once again confirmed that the crypto market remains a high-risk, high-volatility game heavily influenced by a single detective's post.
to leave a comment.
Pro_Storm
·이런 걸 보면 코인 진짜 조심해야겠다.
sam5
·인정
jake3
·흠, 진짜로 의심스러운 냄새가 나는구만.
ice_vale
·와 미쳤다, 증거 나오면 진짜 대박이겠다