Exposing the five most volatile cryptocurrencies recently: who is manipulating the market?

Author: Wenser, Planet Daily

The crypto market continues its downward trend with volatility. However, even in this sluggish market, a few tokens have bucked the trend, maintaining their own independent rhythm of "big rises and falls." Odaily Planet Daily will analyze these recently high-performing "monster coins" in this article, attempting to summarize their commonalities and help identify the next investment targets with the potential for explosive growth.

PIPPIN: A survivor of the AI Agent craze, a representative work of "insider trading".

From the end of last year to January of this year, AI Agent tokens once occupied the absolute focus of the crypto market. Tokens such as ai16z (ELIZAOS) and swarms were often among the top gainers. PIPPIN was also a product of the same batch of AI concept tokens at that time.

But now, nearly a year later, only PIPPIN remains, perhaps chosen by speculators due to its ease of manipulation. Its price has surged in the last two weeks. Keep in mind that on November 23rd, its price was only around $0.05; just a week later, it had skyrocketed to over $0.17.

On December 1st, PIPPIN bucked the trend and surged over 60%, reaching a price close to $0.18. At that time, analyst @frontrunnersx warned that PIPPIN exhibited concentrated accumulation patterns, with some addresses continuously accumulating without significant selling activity, causing the price to repeatedly hit short positions and trigger a chain reaction of liquidations. One address that bought approximately $200,000 worth of PIPPIN six days prior, sold it after the price doubled, and is currently taking similar action with ARC.

On December 2nd, Bubblemaps detected that 50 linked addresses purchased $19 million worth of PIPPIN tokens. They also discovered that 26 addresses withdrew 44% of the PIPPIN token supply from the Gate platform within two months, totaling $96 million. Most of these wallets had recently received deposits. The majority of PIPPIN token withdrawals occurred on October 24th and November 23rd. At that time, the PIPPIN token price had surged by as much as 1000%, and insiders controlled half of the token supply, worth $120 million.

In other words, PIPPIN's accumulation phase began even earlier than a month ago, with the real violent surge occurring about a month and a week after the accumulation phase.

Subsequently, a diamond dealer liquidated his previous stockpile of 24.8 million PIPPINs, reducing his unrealized profit from a peak of $7.6 million to $3.65 million.

On December 6, Onchain Lens monitored that a whale spent 23,736 SOL (worth approximately $3.3 million) to purchase 16.35 million PIPPIN at a price of $0.20 within 3 days, at which time its unrealized profit exceeded $740,000.

On December 16th, Bubblemaps issued another warning, noting that while the price of PIPPIN continues to rise, internal addresses currently hold approximately 80% of the supply, worth about $380 million. Bubblemaps pointed out that since its previous disclosure (December 2nd), 16 new wallets have emerged with the same pattern (funds from HTX, receiving similar amounts of SOL, no history, and large withdrawals of PIPPIN from CEXs); another group of 11 wallets associated with Bitget has been identified, collectively holding approximately 9% of the supply, with highly consistent fund flows and timelines, suggesting they are controlled by the same entity.

That evening, as the price of PIPPIN fell below $0.3, this "monster coin extravaganza" came to a temporary close. However, the next day, December 17th, PIPPIN surged to around $0.5, triggering another massive short squeeze. It must be said that the violent tactics of market manipulators in a bear market are truly ruthless.

As of this writing, PIPPIN is priced at $0.44, up over 15% in the last 24 hours, and its performance continues.

FOLKS: A cross-chain DeFi protocol token, which surged nearly 24 times from its low point due to the S2 incentive announcement.

As a cross-chain DeFi protocol that provides lending, staking, and trading services and primarily runs on the Algorand chain, Folks Finance didn't initially attract much attention. However, with the launch of the official S2 incentive program, market enthusiasm for its token has been reignited.

It's worth mentioning that Folks Finance distributed 1.5 million FOLKS tokens during the S1 incentive event, including Chainlink incentives; on November 6, FOLKS officially launched on Binance Alpha, with an all-time low price of around $2.

Following the official announcement from Folks Finance on December 9th, the price of the FOLKS token surged from less than $10.

On December 14, after nearly a week of hype, the price of FOLKS token broke through $40 for the first time, eventually rising to nearly $47, an increase of nearly 24 times from the low point.

Subsequently, FOLKS prices fell rapidly, dropping by as much as 80%.

As of this writing, FOLKS is priced at $6.40, down more than 24% in the last 24 hours, with a circulating supply of 12.7 million tokens (25.4% of the total supply) and a market capitalization of approximately $81 million.

BEAT: The true monster coin, it needs no further explanation.

As yet another altcoin to choose to take root in the BNB Chain ecosystem, BEAT's rise is a classic example, similar to previous speculative coins like MYX and COAI.

It's worth noting that the official account of the project behind the BEAT token promotes the concept as a "Web3 AI entertainment platform + IP creation platform," essentially a repackaged version of a popular concept. After listing on Binance Alpha and futures in early November, the BEAT team claimed that there were over 1.2 million independent on-chain holding addresses, truly demonstrating the adage "the bolder the ambition, the greater the potential reward."

Similar to the price movements of previous speculative cryptocurrencies, BEAT maintained a low initial market capitalization – after its listing on Binance Alpha, its market capitalization remained around $25 million after an initial surge; subsequently, the price rose rapidly amidst a series of pump-and-dump schemes.

As of this writing, BEAT is priced at around $2.70, up over 14% in the last 24 hours, with a circulating market capitalization of $440 million and approximately 126,000 on-chain holding addresses.

AIA: A decentralized AI agent concept token; volatility arises from contract swaps.

As the project token of DeAgent AI, AIA previously attracted considerable market liquidity and attention due to a significant surge after its listing on Binance Futures, with its price once soaring by over $1. However, constrained by the increasingly sluggish market environment and the gradual cooling of the AI concept, the token price gradually fell into a slump and steadily declined.

However, the removal of AIA from Binance Futures has once again injected volatility into its liquidity.

On December 11, according to an official announcement, Binance Futures announced that it will close all AIAUSDT perpetual contracts at 20:15 on December 11, 2025, and conduct automatic settlement. After settlement, the contract will be delisted, and AIA once plummeted by more than 90%.

However, Binance subsequently announced that Alpha 2.0 would support the DeAgentAI (AIA) contract swap. Starting from 20:00 (UTC+8) on December 11, 2025, Binance Alpha 2.0 temporarily suspended AIA trading to execute this contract swap. The swap will be executed at a 1:1 ratio. The snapshot time is 20:00 on December 11, 2025 (UTC+8). Binance Alpha 2.0 will resume DeAgentAI (AIA) trading at 16:00 (UTC+8) on December 15, 2025.

On December 15th, Binance Alpha official data showed that DeAgentAI (AIA) had completed its smart contract swap and officially resumed trading at 16:00 (UTC+8) on December 15th. Market data showed that AIA surged after opening, with gains exceeding 160% at one point, topping the Binance Alpha sector gainers list.

As of this writing, AIA is priced at $0.11, down 6.3% in the last 24 hours, with a market capitalization of $16 million.

RAVE: A cultural platform driven by offline communities, supported by reposts from Trump's eldest son and CZ.

As a DAO organization that focuses on the concept of a "decentralized music and culture community and platform ecosystem," RaveDAO's development speed is phenomenal. After several months of community building and project development, RaveDAO has previously completed multiple NFT sales related to its members.

On November 10th, RaveDAO officially announced its token economic model and airdrop arrangements. The official statement indicated that the token aims to connect artists, organizers, and fans through a token economy, promoting a decentralized entertainment ecosystem based on the principle of "culture as a protocol." The total supply of RAVE is 1 billion, with 30% allocated to the community, 31% to the ecosystem, 20% to the team and co-builders, 5% to early supporters, 5% to liquidity, 3% to the airdrop, and 6% to the foundation and charity pool. Approximately 23.03% will circulate after the token generation event (TGE), with the remainder having a 12-month claiff and a 36-month linear unlocking period.

A month later, on December 10, Binance Alpha announced that RaveDAO (RAVE) would soon be listed.

The next day, news of RaveDAO receiving dual ecosystem support from WLFI and Aster spread quickly, and on December 12, its trading volume on Binance Alpha exceeded $25 million within an hour.

Moreover, RaveDAO's "high-level approach" has been extremely impressive. On the evening of the 12th, Trump's eldest son retweeted and followed the news of Aster's cooperation with USD1. RaveDAO, one of the participants in the cooperation, gained massive exposure as a result. CZ also retweeted the tweet, and the price of RAVE rose accordingly.

• On December 13, the price of RAVE once reached $0.67, a 24-hour increase of over 410%;
• On December 14th, Binance Futures launched RAVE U-based futures contracts;
• On December 15, RAVE was listed on centralized exchanges such as OKX, Bybit, Bitget, Aster, Gate, Kucoin, and MEXC, at which time the price fell back to around $0.41.

As of this writing, the on-chain price of RAVE is $0.38, up more than 12% in the last 24 hours, with a circulating market capitalization of $88 million.