A fresh wallet made $713K on ApeCoin hours before Yuga Labs changed CEOs – nobody was left to ask questions

🕑 5 min read

A zero-history wallet accumulated $713,000 in unrealized gains on a leveraged ApeCoin position opened hours before Yuga Labs announced Michael Figge as CEO on April 24, according to on-chain analytics firm Lookonchain, which flagged the address as a “suspected insider.” The trade arrived ten months after the ApeCoin community voted to dissolve its own governance structure, eliminating the oversight body that would have been positioned to investigate pre-announcement wallet activity.

ApeCoin surged 65% the following day. Daily trading volume hit $1.1 billion on a token worth $180 million.

Key Takeaways

• A newly created wallet sold 75 ETH ($174,000) and opened a $1.03 million five-times leveraged long on ApeCoin at $0.1047 via Hyperliquid hours before Yuga Labs named Michael Figge as CEO. Lookonchain flagged the address as a “suspected insider.”
• The ApeCoin DAO dissolved itself on June 26, 2025, with a 99.66% vote transferring all assets and oversight to ApeCo, a centralized entity chaired by Yuga Labs co-founder Greg Solano, who called the DAO “sluggish, noisy, and often unserious governance theater.”
• APE daily volume exploded from a $15-34 million range to $1.1 billion on April 25 while ApeChain total value locked sits at $4.05 million, down 88% from its December 2024 peak, according to DeFiLlama data.

A zero-history wallet bet $1.03M before the CEO announcement

Lookonchain identified the wallet as address 0x0b8a. It had zero prior transactions.

The address liquidated 75 ETH ($174,000) and deployed the proceeds into a five-times leveraged long on ApeCoin through Hyperliquid, a decentralized perpetual exchange, at an entry price of $0.1047. The liquidation level sat near $0.0998.

“Suspected insider address,” Lookonchain said, flagging that the wallet accumulated while APE traded in a narrow range. The positioning was deliberate and pre-event, not reactive to price momentum, matching accumulation behavior rather than speculative retail buying.

Yuga Labs confirmed Figge, previously the company’s chief product officer, as CEO on April 24, coinciding with the fifth anniversary of the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection. Co-founder Greg Solano took the chairman title. The company also unveiled Yuga Grails, an over-the-counter desk for non-fungible token liquidity.

ApeCoin climbed 90% on Binance to $0.278 intraday. On South Korean exchange Bithumb, the token rose 132% in a single session, reaching 415 won from a starting level of 179 won. The suspected insider’s unrealized gain reached $713,000 as of April 25 without the position being closed.

When the ApeCoin DAO existed, it maintained elected council members, transparency requirements, and a governance framework through which community members could raise concerns about suspicious activity. That structure no longer exists.

ApeCoin’s community voted 99.66% to dissolve its own DAO

On June 26, 2025, the ApeCoin community passed AIP-596 with 99.66% approval, formally dissolving the decentralized autonomous organization. All governance frameworks were terminated. Assets and operational authority transferred to ApeCo, a new centralized entity.

Greg Solano, co-founder of Yuga Labs and chairman of the newly formed ApeCo, pushed for the dissolution, calling the DAO “sluggish, noisy, and often unserious governance theater” in the proposal text. The revised structure centered decision-making within a single administrative body tasked with supporting ApeChain, the Bored Ape Yacht Club, and the Otherside metaverse.

Daniel Alegre, who preceded Figge as CEO, had already begun restructuring Yuga Labs with layoffs. Alegre said the company needed to “update its core competencies,” a process that included multiple rounds of staff reductions.

The governance model that replaced the DAO consolidated decision-making authority and information access within the same executives who would later orchestrate the April 24 CEO transition and public announcement. No elected community body remains to flag or investigate pre-announcement wallet activity.

Governance opacity has been a recurring theme across crypto projects that experienced suspicious pre-announcement trading. Katana, a layer-2 network, claimed to have “no VCs” while Polygon Labs and GSR were inside all along, with 75% of tokens locked. RaveDAO’s governance was controlled by three Gnosis Safe wallets holding 90% of supply, a concentration exposed by blockchain researcher ZachXBT days before a 96% crash.

ApeChain TVL dropped 88% as APE volume reached $1.1 billion

ApeChain’s total value locked fell to $4.05 million as of April 24, down 88% from its $33.8 million peak in December 2024, DeFiLlama data shows. The blockchain that Figge now oversees has attracted fewer protocols and fewer users over each successive quarter since launch.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club collection, the ecosystem’s flagship product, trades at a floor price of $23,876 (10.30 ETH), according to CoinGecko NFT data. That figure represents a 94.3% decline from the collection’s $420,430 all-time high in May 2022. ApeCoin itself sits at $0.18, a 99.3% drop from its April 2022 peak of $26.70.

Against that backdrop, APE daily volume exploded from a $15-34 million range to $1.1 billion on April 25, producing a volume-to-market-cap ratio of 6.1. South Korean exchanges accounted for a disproportionate share of activity, a pattern that also preceded the collapse of tokens such as Highstreet, which rallied 247% on Korean volume before retracing.

An April 11 analysis flagged RaveDAO’s 879% rally and $1.6 billion unlock risk; the token crashed 96% eight days later. CHIP saw $700 million in volume on launch day with 80% of tokens locked.

APE does carry one structural difference from those cases. All 1 billion tokens are in circulation, with no locked supply that insiders could release. Billionaire investor Adam Weitsman, one of the most prominent Bored Ape holders, publicly backed the leadership change on April 24.

The absence of locked supply reduces one risk vector. It does not address the timing of the 0x0b8a wallet’s trade or the absence of governance oversight since the DAO’s dissolution ten months ago.

What to watch

• Whether the 0x0b8a wallet closes its Hyperliquid position or adds to it. A close would confirm profit-taking on a pre-announcement bet; continued holding would suggest ongoing conviction.
• ApeChain TVL trajectory: the chain jumped from $2.6 million to $4.05 million on April 24, but previous APE rallies, including the ApeChain launch in October 2024, failed to produce lasting on-chain adoption.
• APE price action within a two-to-four-week window. Every previous catalyst-driven APE surge has reversed within weeks, and the token remains 99.3% below its all-time high.

This article is part of TokenEcho’s investigative coverage tracking governance risks and insider activity across crypto projects. See previous investigations: Katana’s hidden VC involvement, RaveDAO’s $6.6 billion crash, and Grayscale’s Hyperliquid ETF filing omissions.

This is not financial advice. Data as of April 25, 2026.

Sources: Lookonchain, CoinGecko, DeFiLlama, CoinGecko NFT