Bitget, Floki teams accuse each other of manipulation after token listing

The teams behind the Floki protocol and Bitget crypto exchange have accused each other of market manipulation after the protocol’s token, TokenFi (TOKEN), was listed and delisted by Bitget. This is according to an October 31 social media post from the Floki team and a blog post from Bitget. 

The Floki team claimed that Bitget listed the token before it was launched, referring to the Bitget listing as a “fake token,” while Bitget claimed that the Floki team was “suspected of market manipulation by maliciously controlling the initial liquidity.”

The Floki team said it submitted a proposal on October 18 to the Floki decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to launch a staking program with a reward token that would “target a trillion-dollar industry with strong potential.” Meanwhile, the team was talking with centralized exchanges to list TokenFi. The name of the token was not released in the DAO proposal, and the team did not state what the purpose of the “reward token” would be. However, they claim that this information had been revealed to multiple centralized exchanges.

According to the team, they told centralized exchanges not to list the token until at least seven days after it had been launched because doing so would violate governance rules established by the DAO. All exchanges agreed to this stipulation, the Floki team claimed in its post. However, they claimed that Bitget violated this agreement. Instead of waiting seven days to list TOKEN, they listed it before it was launched. This meant that the token was not available for sale at the time it was listed on Bitget, the team stated.

On October 26, Floki sent out a warning to investors that any current TOKEN listings on centralized exchanges were unauthorized, although they did not mention Bitget by name.

The TokenFi token was scheduled to launch at 3 p.m. UTC on October 27, according to a social media post from the team. Coincodex data shows that it was listed at an initial price of $0.00005011 and was launched on October 28, although time zone differences may have caused the discrepancy in date. The price rose almost immediately to $0.005850, a gain of 11,574%. At the time of publication, its price has gone even higher, to $0.006053 per coin.

According to the Floki team, Bitget listed TOKEN without having any of it to sell to its customers. As a result, it was unable to process withdrawals. They claim that Bitget ended up…