Arkham accuses competitors of spreading ‘false rumors’ amid token sell-off

Critics allege that the firm unlocked its ARKM tokens ahead of schedule.
Critics allege that the firm unlocked its ARKM tokens ahead of schedule.

Blockchain analytics firm Arkham has accused its fellow competitors of “spreading false rumors” in an effort to create fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) after questions arose regarding the firm’s transfer of its native ARKM tokens. 

Although Arkham did not name the dissenting competitors, just a few days prior, a post published by fellow blockchain analytics firm Nansen claimed that Arkham “moved over 25.2m ARKM (>$56m) over the past 2 days” to unlabeled wallets and cryptocurrency exchange Binance. “Let’s take a look at what’s going on because they won’t show you,” wrote Nansen, noting that the ARKM was sent to different Binance addresses with no prior activity, as well as to a fresh wallet address. 

Meanwhile, Arkham replied in its April 9 post that the ARKM movements “are of unlocked tokens as per the published tokenomics.” In its first transfer, 20 million ARKM were sent to a novel wallet address as per an approved protocol proposal titled “Deploy ARKM-secured Chainlink DON for Intel Verification; Add Support for Solana; Establish Treasury Pool I; Implement Bounty Joining.” At the same time, Arkham stated that 5 million ARKM sent from its ecosystem fund were unlocked as per its tokenomics.

When questioned regarding the discrepancy between the number of tokens in its vesting wallets versus the stated number in its tokenomics paper, Arkham explained that vesting wallets will be “deployed overtime” as it receives addresses from non-crypto investors and as new hires are made. “There have been no early unlocks and all team and investor tokens remain fully locked and trackable using the top holders feature on our platform,” the firm stated.

At the time of publication, ARKM’s fully diluted market cap is $2.047 billion. Despite a spectacular run-up over the past year, in part due to hype surrounding the firm’s use of artificial intelligence in its blockchain analytics, ARKM has lost nearly 40% of its value in the past month. The firm received an undisclosed investment sum from Binance Labs last November. 

Related: Arkham Intelligence identifies MicroStrategy Bitcoin holdings pooled with Fidelity