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On-chain investigator ZachXBT was there to rain on Kraken’s parade when the exchange announced on its X account that it supported Operation Atlantic, a joint operation by the US Secret Service, the UK’s National Crime Agency, and Canadian authorities that identified more than $45 million in suspected criminal proceeds and flagged over 20,000 potential victims.
Zach was commenting on the perceived complacency about how the exchange lists tokens, in this case, Memecore’s native token, M, asking, “Why did Kraken list $M (Memecore) on July 3, 2025, for spot and how did it pass due diligence?”
The questions come after ZachXBT’s analysis of the series of events that led to the collapse of RaveDAO’s RAVE token, an event which he terms as insider manipulation across several centralized exchanges.
ZachXBT has also offered a $25,000 bounty for information leading to the responsible parties.
Why is Memecore drawing RAVE-style scrutiny now?
Memecore markets itself as a layer-1 blockchain for what it calls the “Meme 2.0 economy.” Its $M token carries a market capitalization of approximately $6 billion and a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of around $35.5 billion at current prices, placing it inside the top 25 on major tracking platforms.
When Memecore celebrated being recognized by Grayscale on X, ZachXBT replied to the post, stating, “Please provide a single data point to support your $6B market cap at a top 20 token and why insiders hold >90% of supply.”
In another post, he wrote, “The greatest achievement is $66M total trading volume on an app yet the token is at $6B market cap lol.”
While CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko list approximately 1.29 billion tokens in circulation, only around 230 million are reportedly unlocked, which is nearly six times less than reported.
The aggregate insider control of the M token has been estimated at about 99.6%.
ZachXBT’s on-chain findings specific to Kraken traced $7.9 million in suspicious withdrawals to 18 newly created addresses holding 11.7 million $M tokens, then worth $39.8 million.
A suspected Memecore team wallet also sent 5.3 million $M to two Kraken deposit addresses on July 3, 2025.
Kraken, ZachXBT noted, is one of the few venues supporting M spot trading, making the exchange’s listing decision and the due diligence behind it a material question, especially given the latest exposé.
As of the time of writing M was trading for $3.54, down by over 0.3% over the past 24 hours. The market capitalization has fallen to $4.57 billion.
How did the RAVE collapse happen?
ZachXBT’s April 19 post-mortem of RAVE laid out how the token, which was launched in December 2025 on Binance Alpha with a one-billion token supply, rallied from $0.25 to nearly $28, then crashed more than 95% in hours.
Addresses linked to the initial distribution controlled around 95% of supply, with a further 3.1% in the hands of Bitget users suspected to be insiders and 0.34% at Gate, leaving retail traders holding a near-empty bag.
According to ZachXBT, a $6 billion market cap had been erased on just $52 million of 24-hour liquidations, a ratio he said pointed to a manufactured and structurally unsustainable valuation.
Binance, Bitget, and Gate each publicly acknowledged his call to investigate. RaveDAO denied involvement.
OKX’s CEO Star confirmed on X that OKX’s risk engine had performed as designed during the RAVE move and pledged $25,000 to ZachXBT’s bounty.
ZachXBT stated that he found it unlikely that the suspicious activity had not been visible to exchange compliance teams before he raised it publicly, and pointed out that each day of delayed intervention meant retail traders absorbing losses while platforms collected fees on the volume.
According to ZachXBT, RAVE was not an isolated case, as he added that “Other projects with highly questionable price action recently include: SIREN, MYX, COAI, M, PIPPIN, RIVER.”
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