Okay this one is odd
I wanted to start by saying that I have never seen something like this on Hive. But then I looked at the chart and realized that this is apparently something that happens on Upbit. Not often, but there are several instances. But before we go there, let's look at what happened.
Yeah, it's that crazy. In a matter of 25 min someone or a group dumped around 8M Hive and crashed the price by 48%. Price immediately rebounded and is trading almost at starting levels. On Binance price dipped by "only" around 9% and recovered just as fast. You can see just how volatile Hive is on Upbit as the pump with 2B volume is included as well from last month. But a 48% drop... is unheard of. Until I checked the chart.
In 2021 we had several 40%+ crashes:
Apparently this has happened a couple of times before. To be exact the last time was in May 2021, although there are some other isntances when price dropped fast and hard as well, but no where near this level. In fact, the biggest drop I can find is around 43%, so this one is the biggest one on record and it looks incredibly suspicious (I mean it's obvious that this is whale manipulation, but I haven't checked if there was any news event that... okay I don't know if this is cringe, but as I am writing these words I remember that there was martial law declared in South Korea and Upbit is located in... South Korea).
Martial Law madness
I haven't looked into the details of this, but it's obvious that this has had a profound effect on the people of South Korea. It's probably a normal reaction when one doesn't know what to expect next and apparently all coins on Upbit had a similar crash.
Centralization sucks
Even though this crash isn't a fundamental one in the sense that the chain is fine and it wasn't a coordinated attack, it's clear that having Hive so concentrated on a single exchange (something like 140M by now) is not good. The crash wasn't nearly as bad on other exchanges and it's good that we still have Binance with good volume there. But it wouldn't hurt to have greater exposure of Hive in the DeFi space. In fact, if anything this is a reminder to get our act together and finally get a deep AMM liquidity pool. @vsc.network to the rescue I guess. I think I heard that we are going to get just that in Q1 of 2025.
Conclusion
When I first pulled up the chart I thought we are in some deep trouble situation, but it was "just" martial law... It's a reminder that DeFi (and a healthy distribution) is far more resilient than centralization, albeit perhaps more inconvenient. 2025 could be a truly remarkable year for Hive and I am really looking forward what decentralized smart contract can achieve on one of the best chains out there.
As a general reminder: Please keep in mind that none of this is official investment advice! Crypto trading entails a great deal of risk; never spend money that you can't afford to lose!
Check out the Love The Clouds Community if you share the love for clouds!
