Late last week, Coinbase announced the acquisition of the Vector DEX. Could this deal have led to insider trading involving Tensor’s TNSR by certain insiders? That’s what this investor suggests.
Is this a case of insider trading involving Tensor’s TNSR in connection with Coinbase’s acquisition of Vector?
On Friday, Coinbase announced an agreement with the team behind Vector, a decentralized exchange built on Solana (SOL). With the transaction expected to close by the end of the year, the well-known crypto platform will integrate the DEX team to acquire its technology.
Until now, Vector was managed by the Tensor Foundation, which also operates the Tensor non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace; that branch will remain independent of Coinbase. However, investor Kirby Ong shared his observations on his Telegram channel, in which he suspects insider trading related to the deal.
And for good reason: 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 had been largely inactive, and the hourly chart shows a sudden movement leading up to the announcement:
TNSR price (daily data)
Of course, this rise could have been driven by other factors, but there does not appear to have been any specific announcement that could explain this movement, other than the official listing of TNSR on the Wasabi Protocol trading app on November 19.
This reason may seem minor, but it is worth noting the token’s very low market capitalization—less than $50 million at the time of writing and just over $13 million before the surge.
If there is to be an investigation into insider trading, Coinbase has not yet commented on the matter. It has been three years since Coinbase fired one of its employees after discovering insider trading, and U.S. authorities took up the case.
