On-chain Analyst ZachXBT: Serious Suspicious Funds and Market Manipulation Behind Kraken's Listing of Token M
On-chain analyst ZachXBT posted on social media questioning the due diligence quality of Kraken's listing of the Memecore token M for spot trading on July 3, 2025. He pointed out that approximately $7.9 million in suspicious funds flowed from Kraken to 18 newly created addresses, which currently hold about 11.7 million M tokens, valued at approximately $39.8 million at current prices. He stated that internal accounts, under a highly concentrated chip structure, pushed M's market cap to about $6 billion, with a fully diluted valuation close to $18 billion. Kraken is one of the few large platforms supporting M spot trading, raising concerns about its role in this price increase.
Public market cap data and pricing platforms show that M's market cap recently surged to around $6.6 billion, with FDV nearing or exceeding $20 billion, placing it among the top twenty global crypto assets, alongside some mature L1 and DeFi protocols. However, its circulating supply accounts for only a small portion of the total, and the combination of high FDV and low circulation amplifies the potential for price manipulation. ZachXBT further criticized the M team for only presenting their Launchpad's cumulative transaction volume of about $66 million and the “thousands of users” attracted through incentivized InfoFi activities in their recent announcements, lacking verifiable real product usage metrics and organic ecosystem data, which appear more like a “traffic and narrative packaging” to support token valuation.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
This questioning is not just about "a certain meme coin being controlled by a whale," but rather exposes the structural conflict between centralized exchanges in "delisting junk projects" and "earning short-term trading fees." Kraken has always prided itself on compliance and risk control, but by listing M with a highly concentrated chip structure, extremely high FDV, and existing suspicious on-chain fund paths, it indicates that traditional "compliance + brand premium" cannot fully constrain its incentives for listing during a bull market—liquidity and fee income still drive platforms to endorse high-risk tokens.
From an on-chain structure perspective, approximately $7.9 million flowed out of Kraken, concentrated into 18 new addresses, which, combined with subsequent price increases and a low circulation ratio, essentially forms a closed loop of "exchange → new wallet → control address → secondary market uplift." When FDV is pushed to the billion-dollar level, regardless of whether the project party is genuinely "doing something," the early concentrated chips are already in a position of absolute bargaining power over subsequent retail investors—every percentage point of price fluctuation corresponds to huge unrealized gains or selling space, making superficial success indicators like "top twenty market cap" part of the harvesting tools.
On a deeper level, this reflects the "industrialization" of narratives and liquidity in the crypto market. The story of M is not centered around underlying technology or clear cash flow, but around Launchpad transaction volume, InfoFi incentivized user numbers, and the "meme chain ecosystem," which are easier to package and replicate surface indicators. These numbers can be quickly generated through airdrop tasks, volume manipulation, and short-term market making, and as long as exchanges see trading volume and topic popularity, they are motivated to push the token to global users, thus technically relying on CeFi listings to achieve "price discovery" and "legitimacy injection."
For the industry structure, such events will further strengthen the weight of "on-chain intelligence" in risk pricing. Traditional investors look at project white papers, team backgrounds, and VC lists, but in the world of memecoins and high FDV new chains, the real power distribution and risk structure are mainly written on-chain: where the funds come from, which addresses they concentrate in, and how they interface with exchange deposits and withdrawals. Independent analysts like ZachXBT can continuously influence public opinion because they fill the disclosure gaps between exchanges and project parties—this kind of "grassroots auditing" itself highlights the significant gaps in institutional review mechanisms within the industry.