$SIREN, the token that launched on Binance Alpha and contracts during the "broccoli" era, which is speculated to be CZ's dog's name, has almost been forgotten.

However, just two days ago, when the entire network was discussing its "surge," the total liquidation volume of this coin ranked fourth, only behind Bitcoin, ETH, and XAU, with approximately $23.25 million. If it weren't for Trump raising the volatility of gold again with TACO, SIREN would have been third.

The price of this coin once approached $5, corresponding to a market cap of about $3.675 billion, briefly squeezing into the top 30 of the total cryptocurrency market cap, surpassing established tokens like OKB and UNI.

In a sluggish market, this is not the first time we have seen such a phenomenon. $PIPPIN, $RIVER, $BEAT, $MYX… By sorting through the related questions of $SIREN, what kind of experience can we gain from these similar situations?

Is there a traceable "leverage scam"?

As early as March 5, @c_ckoko tweeted that "$SIREN is obviously absolutely controlled, this is a way to harvest users across exchanges."

His tweet explained well how this "leverage scam" operates: the depth difference in the spot market of trading platforms can create significant volatility with a small amount of capital, affecting the price of Binance contracts for harvesting.

Moreover, as he suggested at the end of his tweet, the price index of the $SIREN contract was adjusted. At the time he tweeted, the influence on the $SIREN Binance contract price index was 50% from Gate spot, 12.5% from Kucoin spot, 12.5% from Binance contracts, and 25% from Binance Alpha. After two adjustments, the current contract price index distribution is 25% from Gate spot, 12.5% from Kucoin spot, 12.5% from Binance contracts, and 50% from Binance Alpha.

According to Arkham data, the inventory of $SIREN on Gate was only 64,000 coins on March 22.

In this case, a trading volume of $100,000 could create a minute candle with nearly 40% volatility.

From the perspective of open interest, $SIREN showed significant anomalies starting February 8, with open interest that had long hovered around $3-5 million suddenly surging to $58.83 million.

Of course, abnormal signs do not necessarily lead to a specific inevitable result. After all, the chips are in the hands of the controlling dealer, and we cannot determine how the dealer will harvest.

Methods

First is the control of chips, hoarding a large amount of spot chips and opening large long positions to push the price up high.

On-chain analyst Yu Jin (@EmberCN) aggregated the control situation of $SIREN and found that the portion of $SIREN controlled by the dealer that can be traced on-chain is as high as 88.5%. If we include the portion deposited by the dealer in CEX, this number would be even higher.

The above tweet also pointed out that DWF Labs might be the controller of this event, but DWF Labs co-founder Zac denied this claim in the group chat.

After pushing up the price, the dealer induces shorts and reverses to lay down short positions, making retail investors feel that the peak is approaching.

From the fee rate chart above, it can be seen that starting from March 14, $SIREN frequently exhibited high negative fee rates, with shorts continuously sending money to the dealer's long positions, and the dealer using this "free" capital to continue pushing the price up. In the early hours of March 23, Gate spot experienced a drastic fluctuation of 78% within 10 minutes, corresponding to a trading volume of only about $450,000, with the price of $SIREN rising from $2.75 to nearly $5. This means that many people were liquidated.

At this point, $SIREN may not be over yet, because looking at it from a rigid perspective, the dealer can still close long positions and dump spot, creating a crazy large bearish candle, and then close the short positions at a cost far lower than the opening of the shorts. By comparing the trends of $RIVER, $POWER, and $BEAT with $SIREN in one chart, it seems that $SIREN is still missing a final netting.

As this article is about to be published, the above speculation has been confirmed:

Conclusion

Regardless of whether the current market is depressed, the emergence of such harvesting schemes is always bad. Indeed, some trading experts can benefit from the dealer's soup in the fog of information, but for the vast majority of retail investors, it is just a gamble with no fairness.

When such an obvious harvesting scheme briefly appeared in the top 30 of the cryptocurrency market cap, I could only sigh.