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WolvesDAO’s gaming and AI token WOOF launched on Avalanche on Friday — and shortly crashed in worth.
It went dwell round 10 am ET. Inside two hours, it went from $0.041 to $0.009, in keeping with its chart on GeckoTerminal.
That’s a 78% worth dump in 120 minutes. Some on Crypto Twitter have accused “insiders and organizers” of promoting early and contributing to the short worth plunge.
Others, like investor and gaming influencer Jonah Blake, have determined to purchase the token properly after the actual fact as a result of they just like the group (and admittedly don’t care in the event that they lose that cash). Trying on the historical past of WOOF in its earliest hours on GeckoTerminal reveals that some “whales” did promote (wallets with over $10K in WOOF). I counted 10 whales promoting between 10:18 am ET, shortly after the token launched, till 10:45 am the identical day.
Collectively, they offered off about $143,000 value of WOOF mixed. Between 10:45 am and midday, two extra whale wallets offered.
That’s not that a lot, although, contemplating its market cap was round $16 million at launch. There have been additionally lots of “dolphins” promoting between $5K and $10K, too.
Whereas there was a small rebound Friday afternoon, by Friday evening the token’s worth was roughly trending downward.
By Sunday afternoon, it hit the closest to zero it had ever been, at round $0.005, plummeting one other 42% from Saturday to Sunday in a weekend selloff.
Factor is, this worth motion of a quick pump after which a protracted, painful decline towards zero has occurred time and time once more with memecoins.
However WOOF wasn’t meant to be a memecoin. Its worth motion and shifting sentiment to this point jogs my memory of what occurred with one other gaming-related token, CGX, which launched 18 days in the past and is down about 84% from its all-time excessive.
WolvesDAO is an unique gaming-focused Discord server and group with about 300 members that has been round for years. The founders use their actual names and have been round within the blockchain gaming house working with completely different tasks or independently for some time.
One of many founders, Payton Kaleiwahea, has shared each publicly and beforehand with me how the token goes to be an entry token for WolvesDAO’s upcoming AI agent for blockchain gaming information searches. The agent can have entry to “proprietary information” and will supply a greater sport discovery expertise than Twitter or Google Search.
So why did the token fall so quick?
One self-described “Avax degen” stated what I feel is occurring right here: “WAKE UP. It’s not the challenge, it’s the market.”
Launching a token has been and can at all times be dangerous. It’s arduous to get individuals out of the present memecoin mindset. You additionally need to actually belief the group behind it, however even when the group is stuffed with reliable, moral individuals, it might not pan out financially (like so lots of my NFTs from 2021).
KAITO was one of many tokens that bucked the development just lately. It’s been extra resilient price-wise than different new tokens coming to market. But it surely’s down 30% prior to now week.
However I additionally don’t blame individuals for promoting half or all of their WOOF allocation. It’s tough to essentially predict what the group, whales or holders are going to do, and promoting a part of an allocation or swapping it into stablecoins is one technique to doubtlessly de-risk with a low-cap coin.
I utilized and was granted 40,000 WOOF. I’ve since swapped half into USDC on Avalanche, which was lower than $300, with potential plans to swap that once more in some unspecified time in the future. I nonetheless have 20,000 WOOF in my pockets. It was value one other $300 a number of days in the past, but it surely’s now value about $100.
I reached out to Wolves co-founders Kaleiwahea and Sam Steffanina for his or her ideas on the token’s weekend motion.
