Investigation: BTX Capital and its founders suspected of price manipulation of multiple tokens on Hyperliquid
TL;DR
BTX Capital and founder Vanessa Cao are suspected of manipulating token prices on Hyperliquid, using buy walls and multiple wallets to create fake demand and cause liquidations. On-chain evidence links wallets and fund flows to BTX, with potential manipulation of other tokens like ZEREBRO and JELLYJELLY.
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PANews reported on November 14th that crypto analyst Specter stated that on-chain investigations suggest BTX Capital and its founder Vanessa Cao may have been involved in price manipulation of multiple tokens on Hyperliquid, including POPCAT and TST, profiting from their substantial financial advantage. On November 12th, the attackers placed a buy order wall worth approximately $25 million on POPCAT at around $0.21, using over 26 wallets to create the illusion of strong demand before cancelling the orders, leading to massive liquidations. The incident resulted in the attackers losing $4 million in collateral and HLP losing $4.9 million. Specter believes the attackers were able to absorb such huge losses likely because they short the token on centralized exchanges.
On-chain fund flows further point to BTX Capital. Wallets involved in TST manipulation, Bybit deposit wallets, and multi-signature addresses are all directly linked to BTX Capital's official wallet and VanessaCao's public wallet, vanessacao.eth. Fund flow data shows that it can easily mobilize large sums of money for price manipulation. Specter points out that BTX Capital may also have manipulated tokens such as ZEREBRO, JELLYJELLY, and HIFI, which have recently experienced abnormal price fluctuations, and suspects similar methods may have been used on ZEC.