Maple Leaf Capital: Recent Bitfinex IEO Ampleforth Token Is Not Stable

Cryptocurrency investment firm Maple Leaf Capital called ampleforth (AMPL), the token recently released in the first Bitfinex’s Initial Exchange Offering, “anything but stable” in a series of tweets published on June 27.

While Ampleforth reportedly raised $4.9 million in 11 seconds in a Tokenex earlier in June, Maple Leaf Capital has said that the AMPL token’s mechanics do not grant it stability, and its low volume makes it easily to manipulate. The firm went on to explain that the token in question is not pegged. The firm elaborated:

“So even if price is stable, as long as it’s higher than 1.05, your portfolio value increase as [the number of tokens you hold] goes up slowly. [...] I can see this make for a great narrative – a double-kill so to speak for retail – not only can the price pump, but your holding size also increases.”

Furthermore, Maple Leaf Capital also claimed that, given the number of tokens in circulation, it will be easy to inflate the price of AMPL artificially to keep it over $1.05. In a different tweet, the firm noted that “only when AMPL scales to say billions of dollars, the wealth it takes to deviate AMPL away from 1 would increase significantly.” The company also suggested that the assumptions behind the token’s stabilization mechanisms are flawed.

While the idea was that traders would sell above $1.05 and buy under $0.95, the fact that holding tokens when they are worth more than $1.05 brings gains to investors breaks the required incentives, according to the firm. Maple Leaf Capital forecast the results of this mechanism:

“an expansionary cycle could be exponential (P*Q) expansion of one’s portfolio value. Slick story to spread. [...] When price dips below 0.95 and enters contraction, I can totally see a double whammy – you lose value on price, and by the way the amount of tokens you own shrink every day. Who in the right mind will act as “central bank” to stabilize?”

As Cointelegraph reported yesterday, only 66 stablecoins — 30% of total announced tokens — are actually live and operational, according to a recently published study.

Also yesterday, news broke that Goldman Sachs is performing “extensive research” on tokenization and the creation of a virtual currency.