A horse market: SushiSwap fell by 10% after appointing Jared Grey a new chief

SushiSwap is going through some big changes. On October 3, Jared Grey was appointed “Head Chef” of the decentralized exchange SushiSwap. Before that, community members (Sushi DAO) voted to reduce the salary for the position from $800,000 to $500,000.  

Then on October 6, asset manager GoldenTree disclosed his stake in SushiSwap of $5.2 million. As a result, the SUSHI token jumped in price by 14%. But the joy of coin owners was offset by subsequent events in the market, which were jokingly called the “horse market” (by analogy with the bear and bull market).

A hoof hit on the price

In 2019, Jared Grey was accused of stealing funds from a project called ALQO. According to the charges, Grey introduced a wallet for ALQO called Liberio, which was used to steal 70% of the total supply. 

Also, in 2020, Grey allegedly changed the label from ALQO to EONS and switched from his network to an Ethereum-based network to cover his tracks.  

There have also been allegations against the new SushiSwap chief about charging listing fees for an exchange being developed called Bitfineon, even though it has not been launched yet. 

On October 11, Jared Grey denied all allegations and claimed that his business partner stole funds in 2019 while working on “fundraising to launch the Bitfineon exchange.”

And then a rumor started that Grey had been caught in an unplatonic relationship with a horse. Although there was no proof, the internet was flooded with memes and jokes. And then, the price of SUSHI began to plummet. The price of SushiSwap tokens as of October 10 is $1.22 (-10.57%), with a daily trading volume of $106,096,674, according to CoinMarketCap.

How could it not be profitable?

While the haters were sculpting new memes and supporters were supporting the new SushiSwap chef, a new token called HORSHE appeared. Its price jumped as much as 6000% in just a few hours. But then it also plummeted. Someone sure had time to make a good profit.

What is SushiSwap (SUSHI)?

SushiSwap (SUSHI) is an automated market maker (AMM). AMMs are decentralized exchanges that use smart contracts to create markets on any pair of tokens. Swapping allows you to exchange one coin or token for another without first converting them into fiat currency, followed by purchasing the desired assets. We wrote about it in more detail here. 

SushiSwap was launched in 2020 as a fork of Uniswap. The project was created by a semi-anonymous user named Chef Nomi. The project has two other co-founders under the pseudonyms sushiswap and 0xMaki (or just Maki). Together they handle the SushiSwap code, product development, and operations. 

Later, the actual ownership of SushiSwap went to Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of derivatives exchange FTX and quantitative trading startup Alameda Research.  

The platform receives 0.3% of the transactions in its liquidity pools. At the same time, the native SUSHI token rewards users with a portion of those fees and gives users the right to participate in the platform’s management. 

All in all, given the current situation, one should think carefully before buying these coins. The risks are very high.