A fake Manchester United token as gained over 3,000% after Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, stated that he was joking when he earlier tweeted that he would buy the English Premier League club.
Although we are seeing a rally in Memecoins like Dogecoin, which has been leading on the crypto gainers chart, as new U.S. CPI data has encouraged riskier behaviour from investors, however, this riskier behaviour has encouraged the rise of fake tokens.
To emphasize to the cryptocurrency community, while there are many legitimate fan tokens in circulation, related to other clubs, the Manchester United Fan Token (MUFC) is a fake coin and has nothing to do with the sports franchise. The rally in the token is due to Elon Musk’s tweet, which was enough to revive a frenzy in the token’s price action.
The token came into existence in August 2021, after a team of programmers, who are said to be hardcore Manchester United fans, falsely claimed that holding MUFC would give buy influence on the football club’s decisions.
What you should know
- The people behind the fake token conducted an “airdrop” round of 10,000,000,000 MUFC in November 2021, promising to provide 10,000 MUFC to users who followed its official social media handles. The prospects of getting free MUFC tokens helped its price rally to as high as $1 back then.
- However, the project turned out to be vaporware, eventually leading MUFC down by 100% after November. It was deemed extinct until a tweet from billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk on August 17 revived it from oblivion. The Tesla CEO tweeted that he would buy the Manchester United football club, which he later admitted was a “long-running joke,” all in the space of four hours.
- Nonetheless, the message sent the financial assets related to Manchester United soaring, including its stock MANU, which rose 1.97% in pre-market trading, and Tezos (XTZ), the club’s official blockchain and training partner, whose market valuation surged by $138.85 million.
- Even Manchester City’s official crypto token, CITY, popped higher by nearly 14% to reach $7 per piece after Musk’s tweet, despite Manchester City being a different football club.
- The MUFC token rally appears to be price manipulation due to extremely poor liquidity and volume in the token’s price. Notably, in the last 24 hours, MUFC had been trading only against two crypto assets: WBNB and USDT.
- While the liquidity for the WBNB/MUFC pair was mere $106.84, it was even lower for the USDT/MUFC pair at around $10, according to data from PancakeSwap, a decentralized exchange.
- The net volume that backed MUFC’s 3,000% rally was approximately $39,000 in the last 24 hours, suggesting fewer traders behind the major upside move.
From all indications, it looks like a small number of speculators likely used MUFC’s poor liquidity to artificially pump the token. The number of traders who bought the false upside narrative remains unclear but given that MUFC has already dropped by 50% from its local top, the prospect that its rate would return to zero is high.
Investors are advised to remain cautious and ensure they DYOR (Do Your Own Research) before buying the token. This rally is also telling and reasserts Musk’s strong influence on the crypto market, especially on memecoins like Dogecoin.
