Black swan event! Salman Khan endorsed token plunges over 90% in a few hours

GARI token, a crypto asset endorsed by Bollywood's megastar Salman Khan, has plunged about 90 per cent in the last 24 hours over rumoured hacks and wrongdoings.

The Gari Network's GARI token, powered by the social media platform for content creators ChinGari, dropped about 87 per cent to below $0.1 from $0.75 on Wednesday. However, it recovered mildly and was trading at $0.132 on Thursday.

Even the volume of the token has taken a big hit, which has plunged to half in the 24 hours. Tokens worth $56.43 million were traded in the last 24 hours, suggests data from Coinmarketcap.


The total market cap to Gart Network tumbled to merely $6.25 million at the time of writing this report. There are a total 45,800,000 tokens in circulation, with a maximum cap at 1,000,000,000 GARI tokens.

Gari token, the native token of Chingari App, is based on the Solana blockchain. Chingari has had over 50 million downloads on Google Play, with its largest user base in India.
However, the developers have refuted the allegations reported by various media platforms. Their statement added that the drop was likely due to a single sell order of over $2 million by a large token holder that affected the price.

Furthermore, the GARI network, in a Twitter thread, said that there has been no hacking or exploiting of token contract. It blamed KuCoin, where the dumping began, which led to a cascading effect and sharp erosion in the price.

"The $GARI token was affected majorly on Kucoin. The reason identified is the $2 million market sell order at 16:10 UTC on 4th July 2022 pushed the token price to $0.14 suddenly as the market maker didn't provide enough liquidity to handle it," it said in the thread.

Gari Network sees the crash as a black swan event and is expecting a sustained recovery in the coming days, swearing on the sound fundamentals of the token. In a telephonic conversation with ETmarkets.com, Gari Network's spokesperson said, "our user base remains intact, and we are the second-largest token on Solana blockchain with more than 700K active wallet users."

However, KuCoin debunked the aforesaid allegations, calling it a market-movement related price action movement and said that details are being checked. KuCoin reiterated its neutrality and said it has nothing to do with this price movement.

When ETmarkets.com contacted KuCoin, its CEO, Johnny Lyu, KuCoin said, "We are aware of the recent price movement of the GARI token, and we are working with the GARI team to investigate further."

"In the initial stage of dumping, the price was lower at KuCoin because we are the biggest and most liquid market for GARI, most traders chose to sell here. The price difference between exchanges existed for a few minutes but was erased soon as people made arbitrages between exchanges, buying low at KuCoin and selling high elsewhere," the statement said.

The GARI token was introduced in October of 2021 and is earned through in-app activities such as video creation, liking, and sharing. Beside being the brand ambassador, Salman Khan is also among the investors in ChinGari.

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