Apparently, according to another Moderator on SL Discord chat, the whales asked for DEC burn, with a subsequent comment that the Whales were pushing for x20.
SL very kindly announced x10, you know - to help the minnows, x20 seemed a little out of the minnows price range.
So if the Whales asked for DEC Burn x20 (before the announcement, as they are reported to have pushed for it) and several of the Whales appear to be employees, could this be construed as Insider Trading enabling the Frontrunning of DEC before the announcement?
This is an interesting article ...
Insider Trading
Ex-OpenSea Exec Convicted of Wire Fraud, Money Laundering in Insider Trading Case
**** ******** made approximately $50,000 by buying and trading non-fungible tokens with insider knowledge gained from his position at OpenSea.
Source: https://www.coindesk.com/tag/insider-trading/
This is another interesting article ...
Amid Cryptocurrency Surge, Frontrunning Continues To Be Major Menace
"I like to compare front running to insider trading in financial markets. In frontrunning, traders make use of non-public information like pending transactions to maximise profits before a transaction can be confirmed," explains Aliasgar Merchant, Developer Relations Engineer, Tendermint.
If we substitute pending transactions with pending announcements.
The Financial Market or Security would be DEC.
Frontrunning, simply put, is trading of cryptocurrencies based on publicly unavailable information about a future transaction.
So how could this insider knowledge be abused?
Knowing in advance that other players will receive an announcement that could cause them to buy large quantities of DEC, will be required to unlock millions of NFT's.
An Insider Trader could purchase large quantities of DEC at a low pre-announcement price.
Once the announcement is made, players will start buying DEC in preparation for the go-live date on 15/08.
During this time any Insider Trader could sell DEC at a higher price and make a good profit, remember there are no trading fees on Hive Engine.
Alternatively, if they wait until after go live, DEC will be burned (as asked for by the Whales), decreasing the total available supply of DEC, and increasing its market value further.
The DEC purchased and any previously owned DEC could be sold at a profit.
Once demand subsides and the DEC market cools, the DEC price settles at a lower value, allowing any potential Insider Trader to buy back DEC at a lower price, inflating their DEC balance.
At this point, any Insider Trader could then use the DEC profit to unlock their cards using the profit gained from DEC market fluctuation.
This could give them a large market share of now scarce unlocked NFT Reward cards, at almost no 'real' cost, giving them a considerable financial advantage over SL's customer base.
Lots of interesting articles ;-)
What a shitshow, dude.