Cream Plunges on News That Hack Compensation Will Inflate Token Supply

The price of decentralized finance (DeFi) money market and lending service C.R.E.A.M. Finance’s token plunged Saturday for the second time in less than a month.

The first time came after an attack drained Cream’s coffers. The latest when Cream announced its plan to do right by the victims.

To recompense victims of the attack, Cream said it will issue to certain affected members 1.45 million CREAM tokens from the service’s treasury. While Cream has 9 million coins outstanding, per CoinMarketCap, only 150,000 of those are in circulation. By so rapidly expanding the supply of coins in circulation, it’s bound to affect demand and therefore the per-coin price.

And affect it it did. The price of the coin fell from around $88 to as low as $51.78, according to Messari before rebounding to $56.44 in recent trading. Before the exploit on Oct. 27, CREAM was trading above $152.

Perhaps adding momentum to Saturday’s plunge is that most of the funds that had been exploited were in well-established cryptocurrencies such as Ether. To get paid back with a lesser-known crypto like CREAM might leave a sour taste in investors’ mouths even if the increase of coins in circulation wasn’t a factor.

Still, as many victims of such attacks never see anything in terms of compensation, watered-down CREAM is better than nothing.