Ross Ulbricht-Linked Wallets Lose $12M in Memecoin Blunder

• A Ross Ulbricht-linked wallet address has reportedly lost $12 million in an attempt to provide liquidity for a meme coin called ROSS. 
• The developer of the token reportedly sent 50% of the supply to Ulbricht; however, 10% of the supply is currently remaining after the blunder. 

In a recent update, we discussed the release of the infamous Silk Road marketplace founder, Ross Ulbricht, from prison. According to the report, US President Donald Trump clarified that his pardon is full and unconditional. A week after his release, a wallet address linked to Ulbricht is reported to have lost about $12 million worth of crypto.

How it Happened

According to the information first disclosed by blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence, the user behind the wallet “accidentally nuked the price” of a meme coin created to celebrate Ulbricht’s release from prison.

Based on the report, Ulbricht attempted to provide liquidity for the ROSS coin on the decentralized exchange Raydium. However, he mistakenly initialized the pool at the wrong price of $1.5 million. Fascinatingly, this was about 5% of the supply. Before he could realize it, the Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) bot had taken it and sold it into the existing pool.

To get things right, the wallet address tied to Ulbricht attempted to initiate another transaction. Unfortunately, a similar mistake was repeated, and $10.5 million, representing 35% of the supply, was lost. Later, the price of ROSS crashed as the MEV bot sold off the tokens at $600,000.

Ross tried to add single-sided liquidity to sell the coins off passively, but accidentally created a pool with Raydium CPMM, Constant-Product Market Maker, instead of CLMM Concentrated Liquidity Market Maker.

Arkham explains that the wallet addresses linked to this blunder are listed on the FreeRoss.org website for donations. Fascinatingly, the site also was reportedly created by Ulbricht’s family to support the campaign for his release. Per investigation, his Solana address received 50% of the supply of ROSS. Currently, this address holds 10% of the supply worth around $200,000.

Source: Arkham Intelligence

Ulbricht’s Current Bitcoin Holdings

According to Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange director Conor Grogan, Ulbricht could be linked with a wallet address containing about 430,000 BTC worth $47 million. As mentioned in our previous news brief, this wallet has been inactive for 13 years.

Shedding more light on this, Arkham highlighted 14 Bitcoin addresses that could be traced to a total of $47 million. One address with the initial sequence, “1CQv”, has $9 million worth of crypto.

In another report, it is disclosed that the former Silk Road founder is soliciting funds to establish a crypto venture. Meanwhile, Venture Capitalist firms, including a16z and Paradigm, estimate the initial valuation of this crypto venture to be $1 billion. Fascinatingly, this has been met with disapproval by a section of the crypto community who expressed concern about the industry moving away from innovation to stardom, as featured in our recent coverage.

One X user stated:

It just goes to show that PR, marketing, and stardom still drive the tech world and not innovation or achievement.