In this endless harvesting field of the crypto world, retail investors are always the bottom-tier leeks.
The origin of the story, incredibly strong fundraising of ten million.
It is like this: a project called Trove Markets claims to build a perpetual contract protocol on Hyperliquid, sounding grand, and has raised over ten million dollars (around 11.5 million dollars) through an ICO.
The project launched, plummeting to zero.
Retail investors saw KOLs in groups and on Twitter wildly promoting 'the next big opportunity', 'Pokemon card perpetual', '10x leverage'. Once the FOMO emotions kicked in, they rushed into the pre-sale to buy tokens $TROVE, fantasizing about getting rich. What happened? The project suddenly said, 'Plans have changed', directly abandoning Hyperliquid and turning to the Solana ecosystem. Once the token launched, the price plummeted like a free fall, dropping 99.99999% from the expected twenty million dollar market cap to just a few thousand, with trading volume barely exceeding 100, and liquidity so thin that it was almost impossible to sell. The tokens in the hands of ordinary retail investors instantly became worthless paper, resulting in total loss; some invested tens of thousands of dollars, only to get back a few hundred, leaving them unable to even cry.
Project accident handling, nobles refunding, retail investors deserve it
On-chain data (exposed by Bubblemaps) is very clear: just a few days after the crash, the relevant wallets of the project team secretly transferred over a hundred thousand dollars worth of USDC and USDT, precisely matching the 'compensation funds' requested by certain KOLs in private chats. During the same period, even more stablecoins flowed to other KOL-related addresses, easily exceeding $250,000. It's ironic.
KOLs are collecting money while pretending to be innocent and some even delete posts and run away. What about the ordinary retail investors who participated in the pre-sale? They shout for full refunds, but the project team only symbolically refunded a tiny portion, while the bulk of the funds (reportedly over nine million dollars) are kept by the team to 'continue building projects on Solana.' The hard-earned money of retail investors has become the capital for others to 'continue striving.'
Script summary
This is not an isolated case; this is the eternal script of the crypto world:
The project team and insiders first paint a big picture, inflate valuations, and harvest pre-sale funds
KOLs take money to set the rhythm, and retail investors rush in
At critical moments, they suddenly crash the price, bringing it close to zero, leaving retail investors in deep losses.
The project team and KOLs have already safely withdrawn, even 'compensating' each other to maintain relationships.
In the next round, there are new 'narrative' projects waiting for the next batch of chives.
The crypto world has never lacked stories, only retail investors who are not being harvested.
Every time I see something like this, I can only say one thing: wake up, brother, don't be the last chive next time.
