Does becoming a market maker and holding a large amount of currency necessarily mean participation in market making?

Author: Ai Yi

This morning I saw the news "Wintermute becomes the third largest holder of $GOAT, holding 1% of the total supply of tokens," but just like airdropping tokens to V God is a promotional tactic, airdropping tokens to market makers is not a new thing.

So the question arises:

• How to determine if a market maker is genuinely participating?

• Typical examples of market participation

• Examples used solely as promotional tactics

1/ Taking GOAT as an example

1. Falsification: Indeed holds 10 million GOAT tokens and the contract address is correct; don't underestimate this step, as many issuers promote market makers under the guise of tokens with the same name.

2. Clarify the source of funds: Tracing back reveals that four addresses transferred several million tokens to 7GNPT….snUM1, all of which are early entry addresses with extremely high returns, accumulating profits of 11.63 million USD!

The four early entry addresses that sent tokens to Wintermute:

• 3kjF7ZXfMYo1dqxFNE7WVtQ38zZSciptu1deWYibre1m (the source buying address of CAnS7…JZT86)

• BNPntzDuH7EofLrHGA7gjbeNvJQbEvvrGrCPCTCNXf7v

• 9pLzvD3s5g7nWbMbURPvYQgHp4piosoVLrxiEgr58v3d

• EUES49UdAkevnREj5YShNXpWjX5DN44uCJQo7yfaggot

3. Check market maker operations: After receiving the tokens, two actions were taken: first, transferring 1 token to Wintermute1 and immediately transferring it back, which is a clear confirmation address action; second, distributing all tokens to the Wintermute3 address through two intermediaries.

At this point, it is basically confirmed that Wintermute is actively participating in GOAT market making, but whether it is OTC buying or at the project party's suggestion or spontaneous behavior is unknown.

4. Keep monitoring: Ultimately, it is necessary to see if Wintermute3 frequently engages in GOAT trading; if so, it can be confirmed.

2/ Typical examples of market participation

Wintermute participated in capitalized $NEIRO market making: once held 4.35% of the total supply of tokens and was once the largest holder, actively maintaining frequent trading with major exchanges and DEX after receiving the tokens.

3/ Typical examples used solely as promotional tactics

This type generally has several characteristics:

• Direct airdrop by the project party / DEV

• Usually airdropped simultaneously to market makers and well-known founders in the crypto space, such as V God and Sun Ge

• Market makers take no action after receiving (V God may sell directly)

• The community loudly promotes that a certain institution has participated in market making

Involving negative comparisons, I won't provide actual examples here; you can check these characteristics yourself.