Chiliz (CHZ) pumps 10%, prompting HODLer sell-off

It’s been a good day for Chiliz, an ERC-20 coin fueling the Socios.com fan voting platform. After trading sideways for most of the past week, the CHZ token recorded a sudden, near 10% price increase over the last 24 hours:

On a day when most of the crypto market is treading water (the total crypto market cap is up 0.03% for the day), the rally quickly captured the crowd interest, spiking the amount of mentions of ‘CHZ’ and ‘Chiliz’ on crypto social media to a 2-month high, and landing the coin on top of our Emerging Social Trends list for the day:

For the uninitiated, Socios.com aims to connect soccer fans worldwide with their favorite clubs through DLT, “ensuring their voice is heard via voting and influence rights bought and sold on-platform in the form of Fan Tokens.”

Per the project’s website, the holders of these Fan Tokens will be able to vote on club-mandated polls and access various loyalty prizes depending on the amount held:

The massive spike in social volume and price on September 6th was prompted by news that Chiliz partnered with Atletico Madrid - one of the premier soccer clubs from La Liga - to help the team foster fan engagement.

It is not equally clear exactly what triggered today’s rally, however. The last notable news from Socios came on October 25th, when the project announced its Fan Token timeline for all the clubs they’ve partnered so far:

That announcement quickly helped pump CHZ by 19% over the next 24 hours, pushing the coin to a 6-week high 117 Satoshi. It’s been mostly sideways action for Chiliz since, until it unexpectedly burst to as high as 198 Satoshi earlier today.

On-chain data further validates an increased interest in the CHZ token over the past month; while still far from mass adoption by the soccer world, today saw 95 unique addresses interacting with the CHZ coin - an almost tenfold increase compared to early October:

Given the coin’s recent PA, it feels safe to chalk the elevated address activity to what’s likely a short-term spike in speculative interest. According to its on-chain transaction volume, around $2.4M worth of CHZ changed addresses over the past 72 hours, while the network’s transactional activity is already trending down to its pre-pump levels:

Judging by CHZ’s Token Age Consumed chart, it also looks like some previously dormant coins came to life in the last few days, suggestive of long-term HODLers deciding to take advantage of the surprise rally:

The HODLer sell-off is further supported by CHZ’s exchange data, as both the amount of CHZ across all exchange wallets (Exchange Flow Balance) and the % of CHZ’s total circulating supply on exchanges grew rapidly over the past few days:

At least for the moment, Chiliz is proving able to sustain most of its recent gains, despite sparse fundamental basis for the uptrend.

How the coin will perform in days to come - after an inevitable drop in crowd interest and an often corresponding drop in speculative and on-chain activity - remains to be seen.