Justin Sun Moves $4.3M of MakerDAO's Tokens to Binance: Blockchain Data

Tron founder Justin Sun’s potential sale of MakerDAO’s token – movements of tokens to an exchange often come before sales – coincide with the DeFi protocol’s controversial restructuring.

AccessTimeIconMay 23, 2023 at 1:24 p.m. UTC
Updated May 23, 2023 at 3:04 p.m. UTC
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Crypto investor and Tron network founder Justin Sun transferred $4.3 million worth of MakerDAO’s maker (MKR) tokens to crypto exchange Binance early Tuesday.

When investors send tokens to an exchange, it often suggests they plan to sell. Representatives for Sun didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Blockchain data by Arkham Intelligence show that a wallet linked to Justin Sun sent 6,802 MKR tokens to a Binance account through an intermediary wallet.

The spot market of MKR is thin and illiquid, meaning that a large sell order can significantly move the token price. A sell order for 525 MKR on the MKR/USDT pair on Binance, the most liquid market for the token, may cause a 2% price decline, according to Cryptowatch data.

MKR is the governance token of MakerDAO, one of the largest decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and issuer of the $4.7 billion DAI stablecoin. The token has been changing hands at around $632 at press time, per CoinDesk data.

Sun’s transfer comes as MakerDAO undergoes a major overhaul of its governance structure – a process called Endgame. The restructuring, spearheaded by protocol founder Rune Christensen, involves breaking up the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) into smaller, self-governing entities called SubDAOs issuing their own tokens, upgrading and renaming its DAI stablecoin and MKR governance token and increasingly investing its vast reserves into real-world assets.

The Endgame plan, while approved by governance vote, also sparked backlash among the community members and investors in the protocol. A slew of delegates and developers have resigned from their roles through the past months. In March, crypto investing giant Paradigm Capital, one of the largest investors in the protocol, unloaded roughly $20 million of MKR, blockchain data by Arkham showed, with the tokens ending up on a Coinbase deposit address.

Edited by Nick Baker.

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Krisztian  Sandor

Krisztian Sandor is a reporter on the U.S. markets team focusing on stablecoins and institutional investment. He holds BTC and ETH.


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