Blockchain investigator ZachXBT has renewed his assault on Bitget, accusing the exchange of knowingly enabling market makers to run supply control manipulation schemes on retail traders, the latest move in a months-long campaign targeting what he has called a “Chinese CEX cartel.”
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Key Takeaways:
- ZachXBT has accused Bitget of enabling supply control manipulation across $RAVE, $RIVER, $SIREN, and $LAB tokens.
- Ten wallets pulled 100M $LAB tokens ($480M, 32% of supply) from Bitget in 12 hours, per onchain data.
- ZachXBT recently named Bitget’s founder Shawn Liu as a behind-the-scenes enabler for Bitget and posted a $10K bounty for evidence in relation to the $LAB scandal.
Bitget Accused of Enabling Supply Control Manipulation
In a post on Monday, ZachXBT accused Bitget of permitting “sketchy active market makers to defraud retail users with supply control manipulation schemes,” naming four specific tokens ($RAVE, $RIVER, $SIREN, and $LAB) as examples. He added that when confronted, Bitget’s response has been to claim it will investigate while providing no follow-up to affected communities.
The accusation lands on top of an already extensive paper trail, as earlier this month ZachXBT revealed his most damning investigation to date, one centered on $LAB, the token of an AI trading terminal project. According to his public findings, insiders control approximately 95% of the $LAB token supply, a level of concentration that makes genuine price discovery virtually impossible.
The token surged from around $0.68 to over $4.00 in roughly five days in early May, pushing its fully diluted valuation ( FDV), the theoretical market cap if all tokens were in circulation, above $6 billion. Onchain data showed wallets linked to the $LAB team had moved 96 million $LAB tokens worth approximately $63 million into Bitget ahead of the price surge.
The aftermath was swift and damaging as ten newly created wallets withdrew 100 million $LAB tokens, representing 32% of the circulating supply and valued at approximately $480 million, from Bitget’s hot wallet in a 12-hour window. Zach subsequently identified $LAB founder Vova Sadkov (alias vsadkovv) as the alleged architect of the scheme and posted a $10,000 bounty on X for anyone with definitive proof of $LAB-related manipulation.
Systemic Contagion and the “Chinese CEX Cartel” Pattern
$LAB was not an isolated case because, as Bitcoin.com News reported recently, $RAVE crashed 68% as Binance and Bitget launched separate investigations into manipulation claims, before ultimately collapsing 95% from its peak as RaveDAO denied any involvement or wrongdoing in the matter.
Fresh manipulation warnings also hit other projects in the immediate aftermath of $RAVE’s implosion, a ripple effect ZachXBT had anticipated, arguing the entities behind these schemes run the same playbook across multiple tokens simultaneously via Chinese exchanges.
He has since identified the pattern as systemic, as in an earlier escalation, he named Shawn Liu, Bitget’s founder and chairman, operating behind CEO Gracy Chen’s public face as the key enabler of the exchange’s role in these schemes. He called him out by name and warned that his campaign against what he termed the “Chinese CEX cartel” would continue to escalate.
