At the end of last week, Coinbase announced its acquisition of DEX Vector. Could this deal have constituted insider trading on Tensor’s TNSR by certain individuals with inside information? That’s what this investor suggests.
Was there insider trading on the TNSR in connection with Coinbase’s acquisition of Vector?
On Friday, Coinbase announced an agreement with the team at Vector, a decentralized exchange based on Solana (SOL). With the transaction expected to be finalized by the end of the year, the famous crypto platform will integrate the DEX team to acquire its technology.
Until now, Vector was managed by the Tensor Foundation, which also manages the Tensor non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace, and this branch will remain independent from Coinbase. Nevertheless, investor Kirby Ong shared his observations on his Telegram channel, in which he suspects insider trading related to the transaction. And with good reason, as he points out that the price of the TNSR token began to skyrocket just 48 hours before the official announcement and therefore believes that “Coinbase should conduct a thorough internal investigation.”
Prior to this sudden surge in activity, it must be acknowledged that the asset in question was not doing much, and the hourly data chart shows a sudden movement ahead of the announcement:
Of course, this increase could have been driven by other factors, but there does not appear to have been any particular announcement that could explain this movement, other than the official listing of TNSR on the Wasabi Protocol trading app on November 19.
This reason seems slight, but it is worth noting the token’s very low market capitalization, which was less than $50 million at the time of writing and just over $13 million before the rise.
If there is to be an investigation into insider trading, Coinbase has not yet commented on the matter. Three years ago, Coinbase fired one of its employees after discovering insider trading, and the U.S. justice system took up the case.
