Author: Luke, Mars Finance
Recently, the price of $AUCTION, the native token of Bounce Finance, has experienced an astonishing rise, rising against the trend from the low point less than a month ago, breaking through $35, an increase of more than 400%. This abnormal movement not only broke the sluggish atmosphere of the market, but also triggered widespread discussion. What exactly drove the surge in AUCTION? Before analyzing the specific reasons, let's first take a systematic look at AUCTION and the projects behind it.
What is AUCTION?
$AUCTION is the native token of the decentralized auction platform Bounce Finance, which runs on BNB Chain (formerly Binance Smart Chain). Bounce Finance was founded in 2020 and initially focused on providing decentralized auction tools, allowing users to create various auction pools, including token sales, NFT auctions, etc. Its uniqueness lies in breaking the limitations of traditional centralized platforms and providing project owners and investors with flexible and efficient financing and trading methods.
As the core token of the platform, $AUCTION has multiple functions: users need to hold AUCTION to participate in the platform's auctions, pay fees or get extra rewards. At the same time, AUCTION is also used for governance, and holders can make suggestions and vote on the direction of platform development. With the expansion of platform functions, the application scenarios of AUCTION have gradually extended from pure auction tools to DeFi, NFT and even physical asset auctions.
In recent years, Bounce Finance has continuously iterated and launched diversified mechanisms such as fixed price auctions and Dutch auctions, and attracted a large number of project parties and users through deep binding with the BNB Chain ecosystem. Auction Intelligence (AI Agent Launchpad), launched in early 2025, further introduced AI technology into the platform, marking its move towards intelligence and diversification. The total supply of AUCTION is 10 million, and the current circulation is about 7.8 million. The market value has ranked among the top small and medium-sized DeFi tokens before the surge.
On-chain whales are hoarding stocks on a large scale, increasing the concentration of chips
On-chain data shows that AUCTION's circulating chips are rapidly concentrating in the hands of a few large holders. According to monitoring, one or a group of whales/institutions have withdrawn a total of 2 million AUCTION from Binance through multiple addresses in the past three weeks, accounting for 26% of the total supply, with a total value of approximately US$62.44 million. As of March 16, Binance's AUCTION balance was only 706,000 (about 9%), and the potential selling pressure on the exchange's spot market has been significantly reduced.
The specific timeline is as follows:
- On March 8, a newly created wallet withdrew 160,700 AUCTION (about 2.45 million US dollars) from Binance.
- As of March 10, the whales had purchased a total of 386,300 coins (about 6.31 million US dollars), and their floating profit had reached 465,000 US dollars.
- From March 14 to 16, the same institution withdrew another 365,000 (about US$9.62 million) and 134,000 (about US$4.15 million) through new addresses.
The current distribution of chips on the chain shows:
- Exchange wallets (Upbit/Binance/OKX): 2.11 million (27%);
- Whales/Institutions hold: 2 million (26%)
- Project party’s multi-signature address: 1.91 million (25%).
This highly concentrated chip structure shows that the whale/institution has achieved a certain degree of "control". The tightening of spot market liquidity has laid a solid foundation for price increases.
Contract trading volume surges, leverage fuel boosts the market
The surge in AUCTION is inseparable from the hot contract market. Data shows that the recent contract trading volume of AUCTION is as high as 10 times the spot trading volume, and the price has completely broken through the bottom chip concentration area. This high proportion of contract holdings has brought significant effects, and also explains why some investors favor this type of currency.
The logic can be summarized as follows:
First, high contract positions mean that the long-short game is fierce, and the market has sufficient counterparties, which provides momentum for price fluctuations. The contract positions of AUCTION even exceed the market value, suggesting that the dealer behind it is strong, has sufficient chips and has a strong desire to pull the market. Secondly, the panic operations of high-leverage players have become the "fuel" for pulling the market. Once the price starts, the chain reaction of liquidation or reverse buying will quickly amplify the increase.
For example, if an investor opens a short position in AUCTION at $25 and the price rises to $28, facing the pressure of losses, he may choose to close the position or even go long. This psychological game is infinitely magnified in an environment with high contract positions, and the panic operations of a large number of retail investors further push up the price. At present, AUCTION has hit a 300-day high, but the inflow of funds has slowed down, indicating that the momentum of pulling the market may be close to the stage top. This also confirms the characteristics of currencies with high contract positions: strong control ability of the market maker, significant leverage effect, and strong short-term explosive power.
New project expectations and the catalysis of BNB ecosystem heat
The price fluctuations of AUCTION have always been closely related to the popularity of IEO (Initial Exchange Offering) projects on the Bounce Finance platform. This surge coincided with the launch of the platform's new AI Agent Launchpad - Auction Intelligence. This project was launched on BNB Chain on March 3. Users can participate in the creation and issuance of AI agent tokens by holding $AUCTION or $Broccoli tokens. The platform also issues 1,000 AUCTION airdrops every day for 10 days. This mechanism directly stimulated the demand for tokens and ignited the market's expectations for new IEO projects.
At the same time, the BNB ecosystem has been hot recently. As an important DeFi project on the BNB Chain, Bounce Finance and its token AUCTION have naturally benefited from this trend. Auction Intelligence's AI+DeFi innovative concept has further enhanced the project's appeal, and may become an important signal for whales to make early arrangements.
In addition, Bounce Finance also announced the upcoming physical auction event involving Yayoi Kusama's artwork "Pumpkin" (1998), which will be exhibited in Seoul, South Korea in mid-April, and the status of $AUCTION as a core utility token has been strengthened. This series of good news has injected more imagination into the market.
summary
The surge in AUCTION is due to the combined effect of multiple factors: the on-chain whales hoarded stocks to build a foundation for chips, the leverage effect of the contract market boosted the price surge, the craze for Auction Intelligence and the BNB ecosystem stimulated market enthusiasm, and speculative sentiment added fuel to the fire. For investors, in the short term, they should closely track the on-chain fund movements and contract position changes, while being alert to high-level pullbacks. Whether the new IEO will become the detonator of the next wave of market conditions still needs to wait for Bounce Finance's subsequent dynamics to confirm.
At the same time, the market is weaving a series of straightforward and attractive narratives for investors: BTC's "insider dumping and liquidation war", BNB's "ecological enthusiasm", AUCTION's "whale control", BNX's "contract delivery game". Behind these stories are similar logics - in a market dominated by bankers, as long as you follow up boldly, you will have a chance to share a piece of the pie. However, this "banker-led" model is simple and crude, but it hides a mystery: AUCTION's 26% chip concentration may be a signal of short-term profiteering, but the potential risk of bankers' shipments is also chilling. In this craze, the battle between reason and impulse has just begun.
