What is going on with Status Network Token?!?!?
SNT is a very promising project, or was anyway, but the price seems to be very manipulated and has for months now:
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those who went and sunk a bunch of money into a coin, and am now claiming “Status is a SCAM!” or “CHEAT!” because I lost my life savings and can’t take the blame for it myself.
I am, however, convinced there is and has been ongoing price manipulation of the Status Network Token.
Help Me Help the Crypto Community
The intent of this post is not to blame others or scapegoat the reason behind a coin’s falling price. It is to help identify what might be a very damaging, unnatural and manipulated coin so that others can learn to decipher this and avoid falling victim to this or similar situations, both now and in the future.
Maybe I am wrong, if so, tell me why. If you agree or have more insight, I also want to hear from you in the comments. Let’s figure this out together!
Status Network Token: A (once) Bright Future
SNT was released with excitement and support from the crypto community, and with good reason- it’s a solid project. Some of the pros:
• Active devs with weekly updates.
• Active Slack channel and Twitter.
• A (once) receptive and very positive supporting public
• A working product
• Hugely successful ICO...
• Much more
The list goes on with many items that would seem to amount to a very promising coin, ripe with investment opportunities and possibilities for decent gains.
Crypto Markets = Huge Risk and Volatility, But WTF is Going on Here?!?!
Despite the many positives of this coin mentioned above, the price has been plummeting now, with no upward corrections, for over a month or more. This has been happening in a very cyclical, unnatural way that has led me and many others to suspect manipulation of the coin’s price.
I get it- this is the crypto game, and Volatility is the name of this game, but even within the highly volatile and unpredictable context that is the crypto market, the SNT price just does not make sense and reeks of manipulation.
To me, now, it is very clear this is the case.
I don't know exactly how, or who, but it is happening, and I intend to get to the bottom of it, but I need your help!
I first became aware of this from reading a thread on bitcointalk.org discussion the potential price manipulation of SNT, you can see that conversation here.
In short, there is always one huge sell and one huge buy order a few sats apart, essentially driving the price down and holding it there, then driving it down more. At a certain point, these walls are removed, the price goes up a little bit and then this process repeats, each time creating new all time lows.
This has been happening consistently for months now, I've been watching it closely, as have others.
SNT Bittrex Order Book: Consistently Inconsistent
It's always the same thing:
The BUY/Sell orders are always about the same distance apart and for similar amounts, but this seems to be varied depending on the situation, which leads me to believe it is one entity (person, group of affiliated people) doing this manually.
Sometimes these Buys/Sells seem to disappear without being filled, then reappear, but I'm not sure how I would confirm this, or any of this for that matter, but through my own observations and reading of other posts here I am 100% convinced.
In instances where there may be more natural upward market pushing, such as the completion of a double or triple bottom or a new all-time low, this manipulation seems to become more apparent and aggressive. Sometimes this means the Buy/Sell walls are larger, sometimes there are several stacked a few satoshis apart.
Whatever it is, it is very counter to the way any order sheet I've ever watched behaves. The natural tendencies of the market to move, to rise, gain correct and so on are all very suppressed.
All of this got me curious so I started poking around EtherScan.io for SNT's stats, in particular the transactions and wallet balances.
Admittedly, I don't know what type of activity would suggest manipulation, in the blockchain and wallet activity that is:
Can anyone give me any insight on this? What type of information that could be found with a blockchain explorer would suggest and/or confirm any type of untrustworthy behavior?
Right now it looks like the top three addresses hold about 60% of the SNT tokens. One of these is Bittrex. The other two have only one, large, single incoming transaction from the same address on the same day, 80 some days ago. I assume these have something to do with the devs, since the token distribution states devs will hold 20% of tokens, which is exactly the amount in one of the wallets.
The other one has a single, large incoming transaction from the same address the dev wallet received a similar deposit from.
Strange Wallet Transactions or Business as Usual?
As mentioned, I have minimal experience with this sort of thing, so the following may mean nothing. Either way, here are some things I noticed:
There is one wallet that has done 2,000 transactions over the last 5 days. More stats on this:
• 2,000 transactions in 5 days (122,460,424.5 SNT worth of transactions)
• Not in top 200 SNT wallets by balance
• Transactions occur constantly, both receiving and sending
• Most of these transactions are either coming or going to the wallet affiliated with Bittrex, one of the top 3 by balance I mentioned earlier.
Is this just another Bittrex wallet perhaps? Is this normal? I have no idea.
A few more things I noticed regarding the wallets. As mentioned, 3 of these wallets make up 59% of the SNT holdings:
• Bittrex Wallet ~10%
• Second wallet 20%
• This is one of the two with only a single transaction ~80 days ago. I assume it is the SNT dev's wallet, because the token distribution pegs devs at getting this exact amount.
• Third wallet holds 29%. Same as the above, one large transaction ~80 days ago from the same address as the above wallet.
What's up with 29% of the tokens, the largest wallet balance, being seemingly affiliated with what appears to be the devs' wallet holding the allotted 20%?
Again, does all this make sense? Or does it seem weird?
I honestly don't know and would love to hear people who have more knowledge in this area's thoughts. Let’s figure this out together!!
Thanks.