LAB token falls 67% to $1.5B market cap as insider manipulation allegations swirl

LAB, the native token of multi-chain trading platform LAB Terminal, has cratered 66.8% from its peak, slashing its market cap from roughly $4.7 billion to approximately $1.5 billion. The collapse comes amid thin liquidity, insider manipulation allegations, and daily price swings between 50% and 70%.

What happened to LAB

LAB Terminal positions itself as an AI-powered research and execution platform operating across Solana, Ethereum, and BNB Chain. The token experienced a meteoric rise in May and June 2026, surging as much as 192% in a single week and touching an all-time high somewhere in the $16 to $27 range, depending on the data source.

Out of a maximum supply of 1 billion tokens, only about 312 million LAB are currently in circulation — roughly 31% of the total. The project employs a buyback-and-burn mechanism funded by trading fee revenue, but when 69% of the supply is locked up and the float is this thin, even coordinated buybacks cannot absorb the kind of selling pressure LAB has faced.

The insider allegations

On-chain investigator ZachXBT dropped allegations in May 2026 that insiders control over 95% of LAB’s effective float, with intricate allocation structures and off-market transactions cited as mechanisms for maintaining this control.

LAB’s token generation event took place around October 2025, meaning the project is less than a year old. For a sub-12-month token to accumulate nearly $5 billion in market cap and then lose two-thirds of it raises serious questions about price discovery and organic demand.

What looms ahead

LAB faces significant supply overhang, with major token unlocks scheduled for July and August 2026 that will release additional tokens into an already fragile market. If 312 million tokens at roughly $5 each already struggle to maintain price stability, adding tens or hundreds of millions more tokens to the float could push prices lower still.

The ZachXBT allegations, if substantiated through further on-chain analysis, could also attract regulatory attention. US regulators have shown increasing appetite for pursuing market manipulation in crypto, and a token where insiders allegedly control 95% of the effective supply would represent a textbook case for enforcement actions.

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