Two wallets linked to Ross Ulbricht, the creator of Silk Road, recently lost around $12 million in meme coins due to pricing errors.
Pricing Error Leads to Losses
Wallets associated with the FreeRoss.org platform received 50% of ROSS memecoins following Ulbricht's pardon by U.S. President Donald Trump. On January 30, while attempting to provide liquidity on Raydium, a pricing error led to the tokens being sold below market value, allowing an MEV bot to capitalize. The bot purchased $1.5 million worth of tokens and resold them, further affecting the token's price.
Recovery Attempts
Wallet operators attempted to recover losses by adding single-sided liquidity. However, they mistakenly selected Raydium's Constant-Product Market Maker, repeating the same pricing error. This error resulted in the loss of an additional 35% of the ROSS supply, valued at over $600,000, again acquired by an MEV bot. These repeated mistakes triggered a 90% drop in the token price.
Other Meme Coin Incidents
MIRA memecoin creator Siqi Chen apologized for the launch of the ZERO test token, which led to significant losses for traders. Chen explained that ZERO was an experiment designed to drop in value to zero, but many traders invested despite the warnings.
Despite setbacks, the ROSS token has rebounded, reaching $0.0104 with a trading volume of $14.8 million. The meme coin incident has raised questions about caution and awareness in cryptocurrency operations.
