A wallet the LAB team funded directly sold 18.4 million LAB tokens, and the crash that followed is exactly why token buyers have to care about supply control before price.
You don't need to be a forensic accountant to see what happened here. On July 10 and 11, a single wallet sold 18.4 million LAB tokens through the Aster exchange, and the price fell from $1.20 to about $0.55 in under 48 hours. Two days. That was enough. A token that traded above $24 just weeks earlier now can't hold fifty cents without a fight.
On-chain investigator ZachXBT traced that wallet back to April 2026, when the LAB project team funded it directly with more than 196 million tokens. He found the funds moved through four Bitget deposit addresses before splitting into ten separate wallets in mid-May. The entity still holds more than 80 million LAB, according to his review. So the selling may not be finished.
Frankly, the number that matters most here isn't the price. It's the 95 percent. ZachXBT's review found that more than 95% of LAB's total supply sits under insider control, spread across OTC deals, private allocations, and team holdings that were never disclosed to the people buying the token on exchanges. When insiders hold nearly all of a token, the price on your screen isn't really a market. It's a number insiders let you see.
The investigation goes beyond one wallet. ZachXBT documented private loan contracts tied to a BVI-registered shell company, some charging as much as 7.5% monthly interest, arranged on behalf of parties close to the project. He also alleges the team unilaterally rewrote vesting terms for some participants, stretching cliffs from three months to nine without asking anyone's permission. You lend a project credibility by agreeing to lock your tokens for three months. Finding out later the real term was nine is a different agreement, one you never signed.
According to reporting from Cryptopolitan and CryptoTimes, LAB had already fallen more than 80% earlier this month, dropping from a market cap above $5 billion to under $400 million on July 8, before ZachXBT's latest findings triggered a fresh leg down on July 10 and 11. Bitcoin.com reported the token has now lost more than 98% of its value from its peak above $24. For anyone who bought after launch, that is close to a total wipeout.
Exchanges kept the market open
ZachXBT hasn't only gone after the project. He's called out Binance, Bitget, and Gate by name for continuing to list and facilitate trading in LAB despite what he describes as blatant manipulation playing out in plain sight on the blockchain. The wallets were traceable. The flows were public. Three of the industry's largest exchanges kept the order books open anyway.
That is the accountability gap Washington keeps circling but rarely names cleanly. If exchanges can list a token, collect trading fees, watch concentrated wallets move supply, and still treat the outcome as someone else's problem, then disclosure rules alone won't protect buyers. You don't need a white paper to tell you that. You need to know who controls the float.
The project itself denies wrongdoing and has pointed to large market participants, rather than insiders, as the cause of the crash. Maybe. But that explanation has to account for a wallet the team funded, dumping tokens the team gave it, timed just weeks ahead of a scheduled unlock.
The next unlock is the real test
Roughly 282 million previously locked LAB tokens, close to 90% of the current circulating supply, become accessible on August 13 and 14. If insiders already control 95% of supply and are willing to route tokens through a DEX the moment liquidity allows, that date deserves attention well before it arrives.
For venture investors weighing the next token launch, the lesson isn't subtle. Screen for who actually holds the supply and how it was allocated before the deal closes, not after ZachXBT publishes a thread. LAB shows what happens when nobody did.
Also read: Eric Trump's Ethereum Cheerleading Comes With an Undisclosed Financial Stake • Empery Digital Dumps Nearly Half Its Bitcoin to Chase an AI Data Center Bet • Coinbase Says the CLARITY Act Is on the One Yard Line and Stuck There
