Stablecoin protocol River hit by coordinated market manipulation

It hit both spot and derivatives venues at the same time, forcing the team to suspend River Pts conversions and step in with buybacks to keep the market from collapsing.

In a follow-up note to users, River said the attack began Nov. 7 with “large short positions opened simultaneously” across multiple exchanges, followed almost immediately by “massive amounts of River Pts” being converted into RIVER and then dumped on the market. Funding rates “turned sharply negative,” the team said, creating a loop that drove prices lower and encouraged more shorting. River compared the pattern to a “Soros-style attack,” where traders lean on thin liquidity to trigger panic and then close out positions once the target intervenes.

River’s response was to pull the main pressure point: the conversion channel between River Pts – the project’s points/rewards asset – and the RIVER token. The team said it knew suspending conversion would be “painful and controversial” because it temporarily trapped holders, but argued that leaving the mechanism open would have let attackers keep converting Pts into sellable RIVER until liquidity was exhausted. “If we had done nothing, the likely outcome was a self-reinforcing spiral leading to total market failure,” the statement said. Once the suspension went live, River said, the short sellers began closing positions, which the team treated as confirmation that the pressure was manufactured.

The project also disclosed that it was buying back RIVER on the open market before and after the suspension to stabilize order books. Buybacks are a common way for token issuers to add depth quickly when outside liquidity is weak, but they also underline how dependent some newer tokens are on the issuer’s ability to step in during stress. River said the episode “exposed a structural weakness in the River Pts conversion design” and promised to redesign the mechanism with tighter risk controls, publish on-chain and exchange data so the community can inspect the event, and host an AMA to answer questions.

By presenting the incident as deliberate manipulation rather than routine crypto volatility, River is pointing at a broader market-structure problem U.S. users know well: small and mid-cap tokens can be pushed around when liquidity is fragmented across a handful of centralized exchanges and when derivatives funding flips quickly. In this case, the project says attackers hit every weak point at once – thin spot books, an open conversion faucet, and negative funding – to manufacture a price event. For a U.S.-based audience that may have bought RIVER through a single exchange or via River’s own interface, the abrupt halt to conversions and the sudden price drop looked like platform risk; River is trying to reframe it as a defensive action against malicious actors.