Aptos token plunges in trading debut

Newcomer cryptocurrency Aptos plunged in value early Wednesday in its debut on major exchanges as traders welcomed APT into crypto winter.

The hotly anticipated layer 1 token was listed in the $9 range – down over 30% – on CoinGecko within its first hour of trading.

Hours into its first day of trading it declined further, down 46% by 12:50PM Hong Kong Time, to $7.37

Coinbase, Huobi, OKX, FTX and Binance opened spot trading for APT at 1:00 UTC Wednesday.

The trading came as Aptos scrambled to control the narrative around its rocky rollout. Founder Mo Shaikh had spent part of Tuesday defending the network's controversial tokenomics and allegations about its processing speeds from critics on crypto Twitter.

Still, the confusion continued into early trading hours as Aptos' discord was flooded by a mix of scammers and community members unable to redeem their token airdrops. The wave grew so bad that an Aptos moderator muted the channel for the second time this week.

Tokens of lending application Apricot Finance, which initially had the same APT ticker as Aptos, also declined on name confusion. The token is down 47% in the last 24 hours on surging trading volume. CoinGecko now lists Apricot's token as APRT.