Ten wallets pull 100M LAB ($480M) from Bitget

Ten newly created wallets moved 100 million LAB tokens from the Bitget exchange over a 12-hour period, a transfer valued at roughly $480 million and equal to 32.26% of LAB’s circulating supply, according to on-chain monitoring. The activity was flagged as part of an active investigation into possible market manipulation.

The withdrawals follow a sharp price rise earlier in May. On May 2, LAB’s price climbed more than 350%, from about $0.70 to nearly $3.30 in days, while 24-hour trading volume peaked near $147 million. On-chain records show that, before the rally, wallets linked to the project moved about 96 million LAB tokens into Bitget, valued at roughly $63 million at that time.

A blockchain investigator known as ZachXBT has publicly requested evidence tied to market-making activity, posting a $10,000 bounty for contracts, chat logs or internal documents related to operations on Bitget spot and perpetual markets on Bybit, Binance and OKX. The investigator has alleged coordination by LAB’s founder, Vova Sadkov (online alias vsadkovv).

Earlier on-chain data also shows a suspected LAB team address sent 100 million tokens to three Bitget deposit addresses, a transfer that represented about 43.4% of circulating supply at that moment. Combined, the recent withdrawals and those prior transfers involve large token volumes moving through centralized exchange accounts in a short timeframe.

On-chain analysts have described a pattern in past cases where project-linked wallets deposit sizeable token positions to centralized exchanges, a price surge follows, and the tokens later leave exchanges, sometimes via over-the-counter trades. The recent sequence of deposits and withdrawals involving Bitget has been cited alongside those previously observed mechanics.

People conducting the probe have asked exchanges and market participants for records or explanations tied to the on-chain flows. Exchange responses to the flagged withdrawals were not provided in the on-chain reports.