Loopscale hacked for $5.8 million two weeks after launch
A new Solana-based defi protocol called Loopscale, backed by Coinbase Ventures and Solana Labs, suffered a $5.8 million exploit only two weeks after its launch. The stolen funds represented 12% of the protocol's TVL. The project blamed the exploit on a bug in the protocol's pricing calculations. Although the project had been audited in February by OShield, the audit evidently did not detect the flaw.
ICERAID crypto project claims to pay people to report immigrants and "terrorist" judges to law enforcement
A project called "ICERAID" has emerged, promising to reward "intelligence gathering" on "suspicious activities" by photographing supposedly criminal behavior by undocumented immigrants to law enforcement. The project has been advertised by right wing personalities including Laura Loomer and Matt Gaetz, the latter of whom promised ICERAID lets people "ping the cops faster than you can say 'sanctuary city'."
An instructional video posted to social media by the platform encourages people to "do [their] patriotic duty" by going to a District Court in a blue state, then "Secretly snap a photo of the judge. Don't let the bailiff see you." The video shows a person uploading a photograph of Judge James Boasberg, who is presiding over the Trump administration deportation flights case, and reporting him for "terrorism".
The project has been likened to Stasi programs in which citizens were paid to spy and report on their neighbors.
The founder of ICERAID, Jason Meyers, claims that he had had conversations with the White House about the project, although the website for the tool states it is not affiliated with any government agency and is not a website of the US government. Meyers has faced several enforcement actions resulting in disciplinary penalties over his involvement in security sales, and in 2014 was permanently banned by FINRA from broker-dealer activities after misappropriating investor funds. Meanwhile, multiple users have complained about not receiving their promised ICERAID tokens, and the project reportedly changed its terms after the token presale to reduce the amount of money buyers would earn for participating.
HyperLiquid loses $13.5 million in alleged JELLYJELLY manipulation incident
HyperLiquid's Hyperliquidity Provider market making vault suffered a $13.5 million loss after an alleged market manipulation incident involving a memecoin called JELLYJELLY. A trader holding nearly $5 million (notional) of the token used a combination of shorts and spot purchases to force HyperLiquid to take on the short position. By forcing the token price up with large spot purchases, HLP suffered an unrealized loss of $13.5 million.
HyperLiquid validators voted to delist the JELLY token. They also evidently overrode the JELLY price provided by the market oracle in an attempt to reduce their losses, leading an unrelated crypto executive to question "Is that even legal?"
Argentinian president Javier Milei promotes memecoin that then crashes 95% in apparent $100 million+ rug pull
A tweet from Argentina's president Javier Milei promoted a memecoin called Libra, which he described as a "private project [that] will [be] dedicated to encouraging the growth of the Argentine economy by funding small Argentine businesses and startups". The token quickly soared in price as traders poured in.
However, within hours of the launch, insiders began selling off their holdings of the token. The token had been highly concentrated among insiders, with around 82% of the token held in a small cluster of apparently insider addresses. Those insiders cashed out around $107 million, crashing the token price by around 95%.
After the crash, Milei deleted his tweet promoting the project. He later claimed he was "not aware of the details of the project and after having become aware of it I decided not to continue spreading the word (that is why I deleted the tweet)."
AlleyCat project developer takes presale money to fund gambling habit
The creator of the AlleyCat Solana-based cryptocurrency project has reportedly taken about 600 SOL (~$130,000) raised during the project's presale and transferred it to gambling platforms including Sportsbet.io and Bitcasino. Although the project raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in presale funds, stating it was needed for token liquidity on launch, only 18 SOL (~$11,000) was ever used for liquidity.
Altogether, around $827,000 has passed through the AlleyCat creator's Sportsbet.io account in seven months. Crypto scam-spotting account Rug Pull Finder has alleged that the AlleyCat creator is also behind other rugpulls.
The AlleyCat cryptocurrency project is based on the 1983 Atari game of the same name, though the crypto project does not appear to have any affiliation with (or approval from) the game's creators.
- "AlleyCat - The Gambling Deployer!", Rug Pull Finder
Dogwifhat memecoin lies about deal to put the meme on the Las Vegas Sphere after raising $700,000 to pay for it
In late January, the creator of the "dogwifhat" memecoin announced "Officially confirmed. Viva hat vegas." in a tweet accompanied by a photo overlaying the dog meme with the Las Vegas Sphere. Project organizers had raised around $700,000 in March 2024 to fund the project, hoping that the attention-grabbing stunt would spike the memecoin price. The announcement alone had somewhat of a similar effect, causing the $WIF price to spike by more than 30% shortly after.
However, crypto media firm Decrypt reached out to a spokesperson for the Las Vegas Sphere and discovered that no such deal had been reached.
Dogwifhat creators have since backtracked, replacing the tweet with a version omitting the "officially confirmed" portion, but still claiming that they "have been in ongoing negotiations with various parties to collaborate on the Sphere ad placement". They promised to return the funds "if, by any chance, the plan is not executed".
DogWifTools rugpuller tool rug pulls the rugpullers
A suite of software tools called DogWifTools was popular among memecoin creators looking to rug pull unsuspecting traders. By helping token creators mask supply control and fake trading activity, the tool was used to convince outside traders that a token had potential — at least, up until the token creator pulled the rug out from under them.
However, poor security by the software developers allowed attackers to ship a remote access trojan (RAT) along with the DogWifTools release. Once the package was downloaded, the trojan began scanning infected devices for crypto private keys, login information, and other sensitive data. Attackers even used scans of identification documents taken from their targets' computers to create Binance accounts.
Ultimately, around $10 million was stolen from would-be scammers. Along with the virus, the people who compromised DogWifTools left an angry note on infected machines: "Solana is a fucking joke and a scam from the beginning, it was designed for criminals by criminals! As a result, we have confiscated all your crypto, because you deserved it! You people who use automated tools to run these scam tokens are fucking disgusting to us. It's about time you got fucked over for once. Solana is nothing more than a shitty platform that enables scammers and rug pullers to steal from innocent users."
They also launched an onion website containing a message: "We specifically targeted scammers in the crypto market who were using tools to gain an unfair advantage over innocent, day-to-day traders. ... We believe it was morally correct to confiscate money that was not rightfully theirs." They added that they would soon be publishing the user data they stole on the scammers.
- "Poetic Justice", Rekt [archive]
Newly freed Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht appears to squander $12 million in potential memecoin profits
Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road darknet market place, earned a presidential pardon on January 21 as an apparent thank you by President Trump to the Libertarian Party. When fans created a token called $ROSS to celebrate his release, they sent a substantial number of the tokens — 50% of the supply — to donation wallets that his family have operated for years, used to raise money to campaign for his release.
It's not clear whether Ulbricht has taken over control of these wallets, or if they are still being operated on his behalf. Either way, whoever does control the wallets made a big mistake when they tried to cash out on their memecoin stash by adding single-sided liquidity on Meteora. They accidentally initialized the liquidity pool at too low a price, allowing a MEV bot to snap up 5% of the token supply (notionally ~$1.5 million) at a discount and resell them.
The wallet operator then made the same error again with a larger quantity of tokens, selling off another 35% of the supply and losing out on around $10.5 million in notional value.
Trump crossposting Twitter account advertises fake memecoins that make $1.25 million
A Twitter account called @TrumpDailyPosts has more than 1.3 million followers on Twitter. While the account does automatically crosspost to Twitter any posts Donald Trump makes on his Truth Social account, it also posts Trump-related news and other tweets.
After the Trump family actually did launch the $TRUMP and $MELANIA memecoins, several more tweets by the @TrumpDailyPosts account appeared to crosspost additional announcements by Donald Trump on Truth Social of memecoins with names like $POTUS, $WIN, $POWER, and $MAGA. The tweets contained the date and timestamps that normally establish that a post on the account is a repost of Trump's genuine Truth Social posts.
It's not clear if the @TrumpDailyPosts Twitter account was hacked or if those running it decided to scam their followers. However, by sharing the now-deleted posts to their large following, they made around $1.25 million from people who were hoping to hop on the trend and buy in early to new Trump-backed memecoins.
Trump inauguration pastor launches memecoin that tanks by over 90%
Reverand Lorenzo Sewell, a pastor and vocal Trump supporter who delivered the benediction at Donald Trump's inauguration, followed in his hero's footsteps by trying to shill a memecoin to his followers. In a video posted to Twitter hours after his speech, in which he seemed to still be wearing the same outfit, Sewell urged: "I need you to do me a favor right now. I need you to go buy the official Lorenzo Sewell coin."
The reaction to his post was not exactly warm, with lawyer Ari Cohn tweeting: "🎶Look at this grift, isn't it neat? Wouldn't you say God's debasement's complete? 🎶"
After a very brief spike in token price, the memecoin collapsed.