Crypto exchange Bitget ($BGB) and Floki Inu’s developers are engaged in a disagreement on the recent listing and subsequent delisting of the TokenFi ($TOKEN) memecoin.
Bitget announced its decision to delist the coin just days after its launch on the platform, citing concerns of “suspected market manipulation” and “malicious control of liquidity” on decentralised exchanges (DEXs). Additionally, Bitget pointed out that only $2,000 worth of tokens were added to liquidity pools by Floki Inu.
However, Floki Inu claims that it told the exchange not to list the TokenFi cryptocurrency until seven days after the launch. The memecoin developers said that Bitget did not follow this and in fact listed a fake version of the token.
Floki’s response to the delisting
On 18 October, 2023, the company proposed a DAO initiative to start a staking program and a reward token. This token was aimed at a potentially lucrative tokenization sector, which it claims could reach a value of $16trillion by 2030. The resulting token from this proposal was identified as TokenFi, with the ticker TOKEN.
Before the DAO vote, Floki Inu said it communicated with various significant exchanges, requesting them to hold off on listing TokenFi for at least seven days post its launch. This was to allow for another DAO vote concerning the listing.
While many top-tier exchanges showed interest in $TOKEN, they reportedly agreed to Floki Inu’s timeline. However, Bitget was said to have announced a listing immediately after the token launch details were made public.
Floki Inu also highlighted that Bitget listed an inaccurate version of TOKEN. The listing went up 12 minutes before TOKEN’s official debut on the blockchain, meaning it could not have been the original cryptocurrency.
It said in an X post: “This fact can be easily verifiable by looking at when their token started trading and when we enabled $TOKEN trading on the blockchain.”
According to Floki, Bitget facilitated $10m worth of trades of TOKEN. Yet, this was not based on the original asset and the exchange is now accused of creating a $10m hole.
Bitget delists TokenFi
Bitget’s initial delisting announcement said that after initiating the trading services for TokenFi, the exchange noticed significant price fluctuations. Their internal investigation revealed that the project team had added less than $2,000 in tokens to the decentralised exchange’s liquidity pool.
This raised concerns among Bitget of potential market manipulation and control over the initial liquidity.
Bitget also identified other potential issues with the project, such as a lack of clarity in the token economy and an ambiguous vesting schedule.
As a result, Bitget decided to delist TokenFi (TOKEN) and proposed a buyback plan for its users.
The buyback scheme has now officially been complete, according to Bitget. It repurchased the tokens from its users at a rate of $0.00605002 each. This price corresponds to the highest closing rate between 27 Oct and 31 Oct.
However, TOKEN’s price has surged since then and is trading at $0.43 at the time of press.
