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Binance Alpha Points were the Bait !?

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In under 60 minutes, a token once hailed as “the perfect stablecoin” lost over 83% of its value. No hack. No exploit. Just a cold, brutal wipeout. Why it has everyone side-eyeing Binance Alpha right now?

Here’s what we got for you today:

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⭐ 5 Things You Shouldn’t Miss

😆 Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream and one of the OGs in the Bitcoin world, just placed a limit buy order to buy all 21 million Bitcoin… for just 2 cents each. Yes. That’s $420,000 total to buy every single Bitcoin ever created. $BTC.X ( ▲ 1.69% ) will never go to zero. There’s a network of believers who’ll hold or buy no matter what.

😮 Cardano founder wants to swap $100M in $ADA.X ( ▲ 3.65% ) for bitcoin and stablecoins. Right now, stablecoins make up just 10% of Cardano's TVL - way behind Solana, where stablecoins dominate. But Frederik Gregaard, the CEO of Cardano Foundation, isn’t sold, says TVL isn’t the most important metric.

💰 SEC officially approved Trump Media’s filing to raise $2.5 billion, and they’re using that cash to buy Bitcoin. Trump wants to build a massive $BTC.X ( ▲ 1.69% ) reserve, similar to what MicroStrategy has done since 2020. They're calling this the “Patriot Economy”. Even with the news, TMTG stock ($DJT ( ▼ 2.06% ) ) dropped 2.06% that day.

💳 Two of the world’s biggest retailers - Amazon & Walmart - are reportedly launching their own stablecoins. There’s just one issue: a new U.S. law, GENIUS Act, may block them. So if they want to move forward, they’ll likely have to buy a regulated financial company, or create a licensed banking subsidiary.

🚀 Bybit launched a new Solana hybrid DEX called ‘Byreal’, set to hit testnet on June 30. It combines CEX liquidity with DEX transparency. Byreal will compete with Uniswap, Curve, and PancakeSwap, the current DEX giants. Right now, total DEX TVL is $20.6B, way down from the $80B peak in 2021, so Bybit is trying to shake things up.

🚨 From “Perfect Stablecoin” to Rug in Under 60 Minutes

Crypto just witnessed another crazy collapse and this one looks more like a fake stablecoin “test run” than a random rug pull.

On the night of June 15th, the crypto community was rocked as $ZKJ.X ( ▼ 79.03% ) and $KOGE.X ( ▼ 53.72% ) tokens suddenly crashed 70–90% in just one hour!

Both ZKJ and KOGE are listed on Binance Alpha, where users had been farming airdrop points using these tokens. That’s why all eyes are now on Binance Alpha. To prevent this in the future, Binance has removed trading volume as a criteria for airdrop point calculation on Alpha-listed tokens.

A sudden collapse, no clear explanation, and major losses for those chasing airdrops. It’s a wake-up call for anyone riding the airdrop hype without an exit plan. There was no hack, no security breach, so what happened?

1️⃣ Phase 1: How $ZKJ Became a “Fake” Stablecoin

For about a month, $ZKJ acted like a stablecoin but it wasn’t one. So what was going on?

  • Despite being a new token, it had $20 million in liquidity, super rare for a fresh project.

  • You could swap in and out with almost no slippage, just like with real stablecoins (e.g., $USDC.X ( ▲ 0.0% ) ).

  • Most importantly: it was being used to farm points for Binance Alpha, one of the hottest ‘narrative’ in crypto right now.

At one point, ZKJ's market cap was 3x bigger than zkSync, a major Layer 2 chain that actually has a working ecosystem.

People started calling it “the perfect stablecoin.” Why → Smooth swaps + Strong price stability + Constant demand from airdrop hunters.

BUT, that “stability” didn’t come from trust, or a solid financial model. It came from pure speculation and temporary incentives.

Money kept flowing in, not because of fundamentals but because people thought they could farm points and cash out later.

It looked safe. It felt safe. But underneath… it was just one giant game of musical chairs. And once the music stopped, we all saw what happened next.

2️⃣ Phase 2: Every Bubble Has Cracks, ZKJ Had Plenty

ZKJ looked stable on the surface, but under the hood, it was fragile from the start.

Here’s what made it look solid:

  • Tight liquidity ranges

  • Incentives to keep liquidity providers (LPs) in

  • A pre-built crowd of speculators farming airdrop points

every-bubble-has-cracks-zkj-had-plenty

Source: @ai_9684xtpa

But here’s what was really going on:

  • No real business model.

  • No cash flow or value creation.

  • No loyal community, just short-term speculators trying to make a quick buck.

It was a system that worked… until someone pulled the plug. All it took was one big exit, and the illusion shattered, just like dozens of other crypto bubbles before it.

3️⃣ Phase 3: This Wasn’t a Price Crash, It Was a Liquidity Rug

On the night of June 13, a major wallet (0x364...f18e9) pulled out over $3.5 million in liquidity from the ZKJ-KOGE pool, and then started dumping tokens.

this-wasnt-a-price-crash-it-was-a-liquidity-rug

That one move didn’t just crash the price. It broke the entire liquidity structure behind ZKJ, which was already fragile, relying on ultra-tight liquidity ranges that couldn’t absorb big trades.

What happened next was chaos:

  • ZKJ trading volume spiked to $12M within minutes, then tanked just as fast.

  • LPs (liquidity providers) panicked and pulled their funds, causing huge price slippage.

  • MEV bots jumped in to exploit the volatility.

  • $KOGE.X ( ▼ 53.72% ) , which was closely tied to ZKJ liquidity, crashed too.

this-wasnt-a-price-crash-it-was-a-liquidity-rug-1

And within the hour, other big wallets (like 0x1A29… and 0x0781…) joined the dump party. They sold millions of ZKJ tokens one after another.

Then came the final blow: 15.5 million new ZKJ tokens got unlocked, flooding the market just as the price was collapsing.

That’s a coordinated exit strategy, carefully designed by people who understood exactly how this market was built… and how to break it.

this-wasnt-a-price-crash-it-was-a-liquidity-rug-2

What happened with ZKJ and KOGE followed the classic steps of a coordinated dump. These 3 wallets tag-teamed the dump, creating a chain reaction of panic across the market.

4️⃣ Was KOGE the Villain? Not Exactly

If you dig into the on-chain data, it turns out the KOGE team wasn’t the one who started the chaos. They just got caught in the crossfire.

A large wallet pulled liquidity from ZKJ, then started a major sell-off. Because ZKJ and KOGE were tightly linked through the same liquidity pool, the crash spilled over, dragging KOGE down with it.

Both tokens were being used to farm Binance Alpha points, so they were heavily intertwined. That made the impact on KOGE immediate and unavoidable.

Interestingly, just before everything went down, the official 48 Club account posted a risk warning, as if they sensed something was coming.

Even the founder of RescueBox - a project meant to rescue crypto assets - also lost $3,500 providing liquidity to KOGE. Even as a Monad dev, he couldn’t escape the rug.

Maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe it was a well-timed prediction.
But the sharks were circling, and there were signs of it if you looked closely.

Some observers believe this might’ve been more than just a pump-and-dump. Instead, it had classic signs of a controlled experiment, such as:

  • Simulating a token that holds steady (like a stablecoin)…

  • ...then watching how the market reacts once trust suddenly breaks.

In less than an hour, $ZKJ.X ( ▼ 79.03% ) plunged from $2 to just $0.30, wiping out over 83% of its market value. But the real story isn’t just how fast it crashed… it’s how the whole thing was built up, and then torn down.

💰 Trading ETF Flows: 1.5x the Profit Compared to Holding Bitcoin !?

Over the past year, billions of dollars have poured into Spot Bitcoin ETFs, helping push Bitcoin’s price higher. These are institutional funds, the so-called smart money, and they typically make moves based on deep research and market analysis.

But according to Bitcoin Magazine, even regular investors could’ve outperformed them with a simple ETF flow-based strategy and not just a little. We’re talking 1.5x more profit than just holding Bitcoin.

This strategy beat “just HODLing” by a wide margin.

1️⃣ Are Bitcoin ETFs a Reliable Market Signal?

That’s the big question. Can ETF flows actually help you predict where Bitcoin is going next? Turns out… yes, they might.

We have a strong correlation between ETF inflows and price gains. David Lawant, Head of Research at FalconX, found something interesting: In the months when Bitcoin went up — like May, July, and September 2024 — ETF inflows also surged, with net inflows of:

  • $2.1B in May

  • $3.2B in July

  • $1.3B in September

So when money flowed into ETFs, Bitcoin often followed with a pump. ETF Flows Today = Bitcoin Moves Tomorrow?

Using multiple statistical tests, Lawant confirmed: “ETF inflows on one day positively correlate with Bitcoin’s price the next day.”

Even more interesting: If ETF flow is negative today, it’s likely to stay negative tomorrow, and vice versa. That means trends tend to cluster, not flip-flop. This lines up perfectly with Bitcoin Magazine’s simple trading strategy (we’ll explore below) 👇

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This newsletter is for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice. Traders should conduct thorough research, understand the risks, and carefully evaluate their decisions before investing in cryptocurrency.


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