Arbitrum Airdrop Goes Live: ARB Price Drops More Than 85%

On Thursday, the Arbitrum airdrop claiming process went live and ARB markets dropped more than 85% lower than pre-IOU market prices recorded the day before. Arbitrum airdropped just over a billion ARB tokens, or 11.6% of the total supply. At noon ET, more than 474 million tokens had been claimed.

At block height 16,890,400, around 9 a.m. ET, the Arbitrum airdrop claiming process began and distribution of 11.6% of the supply started. The day before, Bitcoin.com News reported on exchanges listing IOU ARB markets just before the real ARB token launched on Thursday. At that time, ARB’s value in U.S. dollars was more than 85% higher. At the time of writing, a single ARB was trading for $1.25 per unit. The ARB token has seen wild volatility over the last 12 hours with prices ranging from $1.10 to $11.80 per ARB.

ARB’s price has been down despite bitcoin nearing $29,000 and ethereum rising to $1,855 per unit. ARB trade volume is much higher than the ARB IOU volumes recorded yesterday at $8.7 million. In the past 24 hours, roughly $849.81 million in ARB volume has been recorded. The top three crypto exchanges with the most ARB trading activity are Binance, Okx, and Bybit.

With 1.275 billion ARB in circulation, 474 million have been claimed by 244,255 unique addresses. Thirty-nine percent of eligible addresses have been claimed and more than 40% of the airdropped ARB has been received by recipients. At $1.25 per unit, ARB’s overall market valuation was $1.6 billion on Thursday afternoon at noon ET.

What do you think about the Arbitrum airdrop and its impact on the crypto market? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.