KNC Price Dumps Over 30% in Minutes – What Happened with Kyber Network?
Despite maintaining a stable price amidst a turbulent market over the past month, Kyber Network (KNC) experienced a sudden and severe price drop, raising concerns within the community.
On the night of September 18, while Bitcoin was plummeting to $19,300 in the early hours of September 19, Kyber Network encountered a sudden issue with KNC’s price reaction in the trading market. The KNC price dropped sharply by over 30% in just a few minutes, falling from around $1.90 to $1.25.
At the time of writing, although KNC has started to show slight recovery, it is still trading at a low of $1.375.
Source: Binance
Initially, many in the community speculated that Kyber Network might have been attacked, similar to other market incidents. However, according to Victor Tran, co-founder and CEO of Kyber Network, the price drop was simply the result of a “whale” dumping KNC tokens.
Whenever there is a price dump, fudders become super active. I just want to state that the team and the product is totally fine :D https://t.co/4r69m06MYq
— Victor Tran (@vutran54) September 18, 2022
The whale transferred 5.5 million KNC tokens to the FTX exchange to lock in profits. The massive sell pressure, combined with the negative crypto market conditions, caused panic selling among KNC holders, further driving the price down.
Additionally, KyberSwap, a decentralized exchange (DEX) associated with Kyber Network, had been attacked about two weeks ago. Although the attack resulted in only $265,000 in losses and was quickly resolved, investor anxiety lingered.
Another detail that may explain the unexpected dump is that KyberSwap is one of the rare DEXs supporting ETHW – the Ethereum Proof-of-Work chain’s version post-Merge for 30 days. Meanwhile, popular DEXs like Uniswap, SushiSwap, and Curve Finance do not support ETHW.
6/ Another suggested way is to move all your funds from your wallet to a temporary wallet. Having different wallets holding the assets pre and post merge will break this forked connection. pic.twitter.com/CXGAz4HE1p
— Kyber Network (@KyberNetwork) September 16, 2022
In reality, EthereumPoW (ETHW) and other new ETH forks did not gain significant traction within the community, with ETHW stalling just a day after its launch. While Ethereum saw a nearly 15% drop since The Merge, ETHW plummeted over 70% from its initial value. The whale’s aggressive selling could be attributed to Kyber Network’s enthusiastic support for ETHW.
Despite the severe 30% drop within an hour being deemed a serious issue by Kyber’s CEO, who stated that such events should be avoided in the future, he affirmed that the team has mechanisms to control token supply. However, Victor Tran denied knowing the identity of the whale responsible for the sell-off.
Victor Tran: “KNC is out of circulation long time ago and we have ways to control the distribution. Yes, -30% in a day is a lot.”
— Victor Tran (@vutran54) September 18, 2022
Victor Tran: “Sorry we don’t know.”
— Victor Tran (@vutran54) September 18, 2022
