Are Arkham airdrop recipients still waiting for ‘intel’?

• A total of 93.96% recipients have let go of the ARKM token, including liquidity providers and market makers.
• ARKM’s value rose as bounty offers popped up on the platform.

After allocating 30 million ARKM tokens as rewards, 55,570 wallets have claimed the airdrop distributed by Arkham Intelligence, the blockchain intelligence firm. For those unaccustomed, Arkham Intelligence is a newly-launched analytics platform, which focuses on tracking suspicious activity and token exchange.

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Whistleblower season?

Developed as an “intel-to-earn” platform, Arkham announced its launch on 10 July as the first on-chain intelligence exchange platform.

Announcing The World’s First On-Chain Intelligence Exchange

Buy and sell information on the owner of any blockchain wallet address—anonymously, via smart contract. pic.twitter.com/4xr7dLvOjp

— Arkham (@ArkhamIntel) July 10, 2023

According to the project, its motive to develop the platform was born out of the demand of the growing number of on-chain sleuths. For context, sleuths are similar to whistleblowers who report and/or expose wrongdoings in the ecosystem.

Arkham also mentioned that an increasing number of this cohort drove it to create the platform so sleuths can monetize their skills.

But before the final deployment, Arkham had offered to reward beta testers of the platform with ARKM, its ERC-20 native token. Five days after the platform’s official launch, it distributed ARKM tokens in varying numbers to the participants.

Also, those who committed some Binance Coin [BNB] via the exchange launchpad also got allocated some tokens. But what are the beneficiaries of the ARKM airdrop doing with the token?

Receivers quickly let go of ARKM

According to Dune Analytics, the 55,750 wallets mentioned above have claimed 89.91% of the entire allocation. This amounts to $22.46 million. But a large part of the total rewards have been sold.

This was proven by the ARKM airdrop address balance. As of 18 July, the total balance of these addresses was higher than 30 million. But as of this writing, the balance had shrunk to three million ARKM tokens.

Source: Dune Analytics

Furthermore, Wintermute Trading was one of the largest recipients of the ARKM airdrop. According to on-chain platform Spot On Chain, Wintermute received 15 million ARKM.

Out of this, the market maker sent 6 million to Binance. It also sent 2 million ARKM to Bybit and redeemed the token for Tether [USDT]. Like Wintermute, liquidity provider GSR Markets also got its own share.

However, the airdrop allocated to GSR was five million more than Wintermute. But like the latter, GSR Market also sent some of the tokens into Binance and Bybit.

??$ARKM (@ArkhamIntel) will be listed on #Binance at 12PM UTC today with GSR Markets and Wintermute as market makers.

– 50M $AKRM was directly deposited to #Binance

– GSR Markets received 20M $ARKM; has sent 4.5M $ARKM to #Binance and 2M to #Bybit.

– Wintermute received 15M… https://t.co/DWBeOvNuXd pic.twitter.com/6yjqI7Tv2q

— Spot On Chain (@spotonchain) July 18, 2023

Only 6.3% trust the rise to $0.68

Tom Wan, research analyst at ETP provider 21co, also revealed some happenings with the airdrop distribution. 

A noteworthy part of his tweet was that only 6.3% of the recipients had held on to their original balance. Additionally, 50 wallets —a 0.1% size, increased their ARKM holdings.

More teasing before the launch of the new Arkham @DuneAnalytics dash?

All of the top 61 airdrop receivers have decreased their $ARKM holdings

Airdrop Receiver Summary:
– 93.6% decreased their holding
– 6.3% have an unchanged Balance
– 0.1% (50 wallets) increased their balance https://t.co/OxI6NLGHR0 pic.twitter.com/J3sAwVa2CI

— Tom Wan (@tomwanhh) July 19, 2023

Despite the selling pressure that hit ARKM, its initial Exchange Offering (IEO) of $0.50, its market price increased to $0.75 on July 19. This was followed by a retracement to $0.68. 

And according to Santiment, the on-chain volume had also increased by 5224% to 248.09 million, showing that the token has been involved in a lot of transactions.

Source: Santiment

At press time, ARKM’s market cap had fallen to $681.10 million. A look at the Arkham Intelligence intel section also showed that activity had picked up with offers of several bounties already in place.

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However, the platform launch did not come with its own controversy. For instance, some users on Twitter accused Arkham of preferential treatment in granting access to early users.

At the same time, on-chain sleuths including Starknet pseudonymous delegate Smartec Vitalik opined that Arkhem Intel was great for the community. 

I am confident that I will be able to make a reasonable amount of money on @ArkhamIntel. I have spent at least an hour a day onchain sleuthing since I was hacked a few months ago, and I have been able to identify many accounts on centralized exchanges that are used by phishing…

— SmartecVitalik | ?? | (?,?) |?| (?,?) (@Smartecio) July 15, 2023