$W READ :Starting with a price of $1.61 at launch on March 3, 2024, Wormhole (W) price closed at $1.3149. It is currently trading at $1.18, a decrease of 29.61% from its all-time high. The price decline has pushed down it market valuation from $3 billion to $2.23 billion, positioning it at 207th in the market, according to CoinMarketCap.

Wormhole also recorded a trading volume of $1.71 billion in the past 24-hours. Out of a total supply of 10 billion W, the token has 1.8 billion W in circulation.

reasons contributed to price decline of Wormhole.

1. Phishing Scam

Crypto scammers, hackers, and meme-coiners have targeted the $850 million airdrop event by Wormhole, a cross-chain bridging platform that launched its governance token (W). The airdrop announcement faced scam accounts with “gold checkmarks,” as noted by blockchain sleuth ZachXBT.

Founder Robinson Burkey’s account was also attacked with malicious links post-airdrop announcement, leading to its privatization.

The presence of scams and hacking attempts in combination with the subsequent privatization of the founder’s account, could have created negative sentiment around the project and its token. Investors may have doubted the legitimacy or become cautious of the potential security risks of the project, leading them to sell off their holdings.

The W token debuted at $1.66 on OpenBook DEX with a market cap of $2.98 billion, now trading at $1.13 after over 20% drop. 674 million tokens were allocated for the airdrop, valuing it at $896 million for eligible users. Wormhole plans to expand the W token to the Ethereum network and other layer-2 networks in the future.

Spoof Token “warmhole”

A spoof token called “warmhole” emerged immediately after the launch of Wormhole’s token airdrop. This may have contributed to the price decline of the token. Some memecoin developers seized the opportunity to create the parody token. The spoof token gained a significant 83,000% within six hours of its launch, rising from a market cap of $100,000, recording a peak of $8.3 million in market value.