Machi Big Brother proposed a $1 million buyout of Friends.Tech on August 27, offering to acquire the stalled project from Racer and Paradigm and relaunch its FRIEND token.

The proposal sent FRIEND sharply higher, but the move also revived questions about Machi’s own heavy losses on the token and whether his plan can bring the project back to life.

Machi Offers $1M as FRIEND Trading Activity Explodes

In a post on Wednesday, Machi Big Brother wrote that Friend.Tech was trading at less than $300,000 in market capitalization before making his offer.

“I’m offering a 1 mil usd buyout offer to Racer and @paradigm. We can CTO relaunch $FRIEND,” he wrote.

The proposal quickly changed the token’s trading activity, with CoinGecko data showing FRIEND up more than 1,600% over 24 hours at the time of writing, with the token trading near $0.06. It had traded as low as $0.0025 during the previous 24 hours and reached roughly $0.10 at its high. In addition, trading volume had climbed to about $5.3 million over 24 hours, a 94,831% increase from the previous day.

Moves across other timeframes were even bigger, with the asset jumping by more than 2,600% from where it had been a week ago and almost 3,400% in 14 days. Across one month, it had gained nearly 3,300%, although the numbers are bound to change given ongoing volatility.

Machi’s offer comes with a sizable personal history involving FRIEND. According to Lookonchain, he previously spent about 5,200 ETH, worth $16.7 million at the time, to acquire aroud 11 million FRIEND. Those tokens had been worth only $500,000 when Lookonchain posted, leaving Machi with a loss exceeding $16 million.

There was another detail. Lookonchain noted that Machi had transferred the 11 million coins to wallet 0x3205 five days before announcing his $1 million offer. However, the crypto trader rejected any suggestion that he had sold the tokens, and described the receiving address as his “new fomo wallet.”

Friend.Tech’s Collapse Left FRIEND Vulnerable

Friend.Tech launched on Base on August 2023 and initially drew users with a system that allowed people to trade access to influencers’ feeds. But activity weakened considerably after its early success.

As CryptoPotato reported in September 2024, the development team then transferred control of Friend.Tech’s smart contract to Ethereum’s null address, preventing future changes to fee or functionality. The decision came as platform revenues had fallen dramatically, with reported fees reaching as little as $71.

FRIEND also suffered heavily during that decline, and even reached a new all-time low. Wednesday’s rally therefore needs to be viewed against a much larger collapse, as even that move still leaves the token over 98% below its all-time high.

Machi’s proposal now puts the project in an unusual position: a token that had almost disappeared from traders’ attention suddenly has millions of dollars in daily turnover, while the person proposing its revival has already lost millions on a past investment. Whether the bid becomes an actual acqusition remains to be seen.

Source: CryptoPotato