Sui Foundation Calls Report of Supply Manipulation 'Materially False'

SUI, the native token of the blockchain that was built by former Meta (META) employees, has tumbled as much as 9% after the director of the South Korean Financial Supervisory Service reported to have said that he will check if the Sui team is manipulating the supply of the token.

BlockMedia reported that the regulator's director, Lee Bok-Hyeon, will "inspect" SUI's behavior to see if the team has intentionally inflated supply "through staking or unfair disclosure."

The Sui Foundation denied the allegations in an emailed statement to CoinDesk. “The Sui Foundation wants to address unfounded and materially false statements surrounding the supply of SUI tokens. Contrary to recent conjecture, there has never been any sale of SUI tokens by the Foundation after the initial Community Access Program (CAP) distributions," according to a spokesperson for the Sui Foundation.

"In addition, Sui Foundation has and remains committed to cooperating with DAXA and its member exchanges in the spirit of full compliance and transparency. The circulating supply schedule displayed in the Sui Foundation public website and available through the public API endpoints is accurate.”” spokesperson added.

The blockchain company said in June that it had "not sold staking rewards or any other tokens from locked and non-circulating staked SUI on Binance or otherwise." The comments came in response to decentralized finance (DeFi) researcher DefiSquared, who claimed that SUI had "intentionally misrepresented emissions" and "dumped tokens on Binance."

SUI is trading near an all-time low of $0.3796, about 78% lower than when it debuted in May, per CoinMarketCap.

According to token.unlocks, $336 million worth of tokens have been unlocked since the token was issued, with $72 million being allocated to stake subsidies, $129 million going towards the community reserve and $139 million being distributed to the community access program.

Series A and Series B investors will have access to their tokens in May 2024, with $290 million worth of tokens scheduled to be unlocked.

UPDATE (Oct. 17, 6:07 UTC): Updates comments from the foundation.

UPDATE (Oct. 17, 20:55 UTC): Corrects timeline for investors access to the token.