The creator of the stablecoin project Plasma, Paul Fax, denied insider-trading allegations after XPL dropped by more than 40%. Some community members remain unconvinced by his wording.
We’ve seen a number of rumors circulating since the launch of XPL and want to set the record straight.
1/ No team members have sold any XPL. All investor and team XPL is locked for 3 years with a 1 year cliff.
2/ Of our team of ~50, three spent time at Blur or Blast. Our team…
— Paul (@pauliepunt) October 1, 2025
“No team members have sold XPL. All their holdings and investors’ coins are locked for three years with a one-year vesting,” he wrote.
Plasma launched a beta mainnet and its native token on September 25. XPL debuted at $1.30 and, three days later, reached an all-time high of $1.68. Since then its price has fallen by 41.8%, according to CoinGecko.
At the time of writing, the token trades at $0.90.
The community suspected Plasma representatives of using algorithmic sales via the TWAP method, in which large orders are split into smaller ones. A user under the pseudonym ManaMoon pointed to transfers of more than 600m XPL from a team wallet to exchanges before the launch.
OK so I actually dug into what happened with $XPL, the vaults, and the Wintermute accusations.
First, I wanted to see where the Plasma Team Vault was sending their tokens so I looked at each notable transfer from their vault.
Vault address:… https://t.co/xZgm9D2u0U pic.twitter.com/lKbWmuh2AA
— ManaMoon (@ManaMoonNFT) September 30, 2025
“Personally, I think someone was running TWAP sales of an excessive quantity of tokens that retail buyers could not absorb,” he wrote.
A community member going by crypto — popseye also blamed the market maker Wintermute for the XPL plunge.
Momentum completely ruined by the team dumping 800m tokens
With wintermute as the MM@Plasma $xpl pretty much destroyed their chart and momentum and I hope their project fails (it probably will given how dumb they are) $aster made me hold this a bit longer than I wanted to… https://t.co/ZjQVXaadkQ
— crypto — popseye (papovic) 🛸 🏠 🍄 (@crypto_popseye) September 30, 2025
“Plasma destroyed their chart and momentum, so I hope their project fails,” he said.
Fax denied any connection between the project and the platform, noting that he has the same information as other users.
“We did not hire Wintermute as a market maker and have never contracted them for any services,” he stressed.
Not everyone is convinced
The community reacted sceptically to the Plasma founder’s statements. crypto — popseye noted that Fax ruled out team sales while leaving the status of other token categories unclear, such as those allocated to “the ecosystem and its growth”.
“It’s obvious they were sold, yet you phrased the tweet as if that didn’t happen. Stop lying, Polly—you can’t fool onchain,” — wrote he.
A user under the pseudonym Melardev agreed. He pointed out that more tokens are on exchanges than were sold in the presale:
“Of course the team sold nothing—their tokens are locked—but the ecosystem coins were definitely dumped on the market. In the name of transparency, disclose how you used 800m XPL.”
In his post Fax stressed that the Plasma team is “focused on building the monetary system of the future” and will not provide further comment.
In September, the stablecoin project announced the launch of the neobank Plasma One with yields above 10% per annum.