Crypto community went wild after DeFi protocol Liquity teased a takeover on April Fool’s Day, sending its token on a 10% rollercoaster.
Liquity, the DeFi borrowing protocol with roughly $257 million in total value locked per DefiLlama, found itself in a frenzy after posting what first looked like a big acquisition by stablecoin giant Circle on April 1.
In an X post today, the protocol wrote:
“BREAKING: Circle has acquired Liquity. This acquisition will enable Circle to offer its users a non-freezable stablecoin and directly distribute yield under the Clarity Act.”
Circle hasn’t said a word about any deal, leaving the crypto crowd guessing if the post was a stunt for April Fool’s Day. Hours later, amid outrage accusing the team of market manipulation, Liquity clarified in a follow-up X post that it was indeed a joke:
“April 1st is the one day a year USDC▲$0.9997 pretends to be non-freezable. BOLD does it the other 364. Happy April Fools.”
LQTY Price Dumps on Clarification
The clarification did little to calm the chaos, though. LQTY, Liquity’s native token, surged about 10% in minutes from $0.28 to $0.31 before crashing back down, according to Binance data.
The reaction was spicy, to say the least. “Oh no! Fake news like that, just to pump the price of your stablecoin to the moon? It’s disgusting…,” wrote on X a user under alias @dbadol2000.
Others questioned the point entirely: “Since when is an acquisition even an April Fool’s joke lmao. And you have a token????? Jfc,” wrote @farokh. Amid the outrage, Dan Robinson, general partner at crypto VC giant Paradigm, advised in an X post that a crypto team with a token should “never, ever, ever do April Fool’s Day.”
