Silk Highway founder Ross Ulbricht misplaced $12 million on Pump.enjoyable whereas making an attempt to liquidate donated ROSS tokens. He acquired solely $600,000 for these belongings, though he nonetheless retains 10% of the availability.
This incident illustrates how a lot the crypto area has modified since Ulbricht was final energetic. In comparison with the Silk Highway, Pump.enjoyable and meme cash are new paradigm of velocity and chaos.
Ulbricht’s Impolite Awakening on Pump.enjoyable
In line with blockchain evaluation agency Arkham Intelligence, Ross Ulbricht simply misplaced $12 million on Pump.enjoyable. Ulbricht, founding father of the Silk Highway, grew to become a preferred determine among the many crypto group as a result of his ardour for Bitcoin and his decade-long imprisonment.
After Donald Trump pardoned him upon taking workplace, group figures started donating cash to help his reintegration into society.
One in all these donations illustrates simply how a lot the crypto area has modified within the final ten years. An nameless developer created a ROSS meme coin on the Pump.enjoyable launchpad and gave Ulbricht half the availability.
Nevertheless, when making an attempt to liquidate it, he unintentionally cratered its worth with disastrous penalties.
“Ross Ulbricht’s Solana donation tackle acquired 50% of the availability of ROSS from the developer final week. Ross tried so as to add single-sided liquidity to promote the cash off passively, however by chance created a pool with Raydium CPMM (Fixed-Product Market Maker) as a substitute of CLMM (Concentrated Liquidity Market Maker),” Arkham claimed.
Ulbricht initialized the ROSS liquidity pool on Pump.enjoyable on the fallacious worth, inflicting an MEV bot to take and promote it immediately. At first, this solely used 5% of the entire token provide, however Ulbricht tried to liquidate 35% shortly afterward.
This brought about ROSS tokens to drop by 90%, and he acquired $600,000 for $12 million value of belongings.
The crypto group’s rapid response was sympathetic in nature. Earlier than he was arrested, Bitcoin transactions on the Silk Highway have been the biggest catalyst for the sector. Some would even argue that a lot of customers again in 2012 grew to become conversant in crypto simply due to the Silk Highway.
Whereas most group members don’t dispute Ulbricht’s imprisonment, the extent of his sentence felt largely exacerbated. As an example, Ulbricht acquired a double life sentence, whereas among the worst drug sellers on Silk Highway noticed lighter sentencing.
General, the ROSS tokens have been meant to assist him get again into the true world, however the technicalities of DeFi and meme cash have modified quite a bit. He nonetheless retains one-fifth of his donated ROSS tokens, that are value considerably much less.
This episode illustrates that trade veterans like Ulbricht can nonetheless lose out on Pump.enjoyable. Most merchants on the platform lose cash, and Solana’s founders confirmed a robust contempt for it in an nameless survey.
The meme coin launchpad might have record-level incomes in 2025, but it surely’s additionally underneath quite a lot of scrutiny. Hopefully, Ulbricht can bounce again from this impolite awakening.
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