Opinion: BTX Capital is accused of "maliciously manipulating" the prices of projects like POPCAT on Hyperliquid

Cryptanalysis expert Specter stated that on-chain investigations show that BTX Capital and its founder Vanessa Cao may be involved in price manipulation of various tokens on Hyperliquid, including POPCAT and TST, profiting from their substantial financial advantage.

On November 12, attackers placed a buy wall of approximately $25 million at a price of about $0.21 for POPCAT, creating a strong demand illusion using over 26 wallets before canceling orders, leading to significant liquidations. The incident caused the attackers to incur a loss of $4 million in collateral, while HLP lost $4.9 million. Specter believes that the attackers were able to bear such massive losses possibly because they shorted the token on centralized exchanges.

On-chain fund flows further point to BTX Capital. Wallets involved in TST manipulation, Bybit deposit wallets, and multi-signature addresses are directly linked to BTX Capital's official wallet and Vanessa Cao's public wallet vanessacao.eth. The flow of funds indicates that they can easily mobilize large amounts of capital for price manipulation. Specter noted that BTX Capital may also have manipulated tokens like ZEREBRO, JELLYJELLY, and HIFI, which have shown unusual volatility recently, and suspects that similar tactics may have been applied to ZEC.