Key Highlights
- $BTR price plunged from ~$0.20 to $0.04 in under 24 hours, wiping out tens of millions in market value with trading volume spiking over 500%.
- Nearly 141 million BTR (41% of circulating supply) flooded into a single Bithumb hot wallet, coinciding exactly with the price collapse.
- Despite strong VC backing and minimal daily unlocks, concentrated wallets appear to have offloaded heavily on thin liquidity, sparking manipulation accusations while the team stayed mostly silent.
Bitlayer’s $BTR token suffered a brutal 80% collapse on March 24, plunging from roughly $0.20 to as low as $0.04 in under 24 hours, wiping out tens of millions in market value and triggering widespread panic among holders.
Onchain sleuth EmberCN flagged the chaos on X, citing data from blockchain analytics platform Arkham. It revealed that approximately 141 million BTR tokens, about 41% of the circulating supply, flooded into a single Bithumb hot wallet address over the same period.
In the wake, multiple large deposits hit the Korean exchange in rapid succession, coinciding precisely with the price freefall. Accompanying the exchange flow was the trading volume on $BTR, which spiked over 500%—as per CoinMarketCap data.
From millions in funding to fresh crash
Bitlayer, a Bitcoin Layer 2 project built on the BitVM paradigm, had positioned itself as a serious player in BTCFi, boasting backers including Polychain Capital, Franklin Templeton, Framework Ventures, and OKX Ventures.
The project raised around $30 million and attracted retail buyers through public sales on platforms like CoinList. Its token launched with a complex vesting schedule, but daily unlocks beginning March 25 amount to just 0.05% of supply—far too small to explain the scale of this dump.
In the latest turn in the project’s timeline, social media lit up with accusations of coordinated distribution or outright manipulation. Various users noted patterns reminiscent of earlier altcoin “pump-dump” cycles: a sharp run-up followed by heavy selling pressure that retail investors could not absorb.
As noted above, a group of concentrated wallets were offloading BTC tokens into Bithumb’s relatively thin liquidity pool, amplifying the slide through cascading liquidations.
The Bitlayer team had not issued an official statement by mid-morning UTC, but the project’s X handle shared a node upgrade announcement hours ago, which seems to be the crux of the matter.
This is a developing story. More information will be added as the event unfolds.
Also read: SIREN Crashes Over 62% Within 24 Hours After X-Fueled Buying Frenzy
