Key Takeaways
How bad is the price manipulation problem in 2025?
CertiK tracked 51 “incidents” (read: heists with spreadsheets), bleeding $42 million from naive traders. Because nothing says “financial innovation” like a good old-fashioned bank robbery, right? 💸
What happened with Popcat on Hyperliquid?
A whale with a talent for theater 🐋💥 crashed Popcat 43% after building a “$20 million buy wall” (spoiler: it was made of digital confetti). Result? $63 million in liquidations. Truly, the Hamilton of market manipulation.
Price manipulation in 2025: the fastest-growing sector since, well, ever. Popcat’s crash? A masterpiece of coordinated chaos. Imagine Wall Street’s greed condensed into a TikTok trend. 📉
CertiK’s report reads like a crime novel: 51 incidents, $42 million gone. And you thought your crypto wallet was cursed. 🎩
Q4 alone saw 19 attacks-because nothing says “holiday cheer” like watching your life savings evaporate. 🎄🔥
The Popcat scheme
The Solana meme coin became Ground Zero on 12 November. Plot twist: an anonymous trader played both Jekyll and Hyde on Hyperliquid. 🎭
The playbook? Withdraw $3M from OKX, split into 19 wallets, lever up 5x, build a fake “$20M buy wall” at $0.21. Step 5: Profit? Step 5: Watch the world burn. 🔥
Retards (yes, retards) flocked to the fake wall like moths to a flame. Then-poof! The whale vanished, leaving a 43% crash and $63M in vaporized positions. One trader lost $21M. Ouch. 💸
Hyperliquid’s vault ate $4.9M in bad debt. Meanwhile, the whale’s $3M? Also gone. A Pyrrhic victory! 🏺
Wider pattern of crypto price manipulation
CertiK’s “Hall of Shame” 2025:
- Resupply: $9.6M [June] (plot twist: June’s a scammer!)
- OdinFun: $7M [August] (summer of discontent)
- Loopscale: $5.8M [April] (tax evasion, anyone?)
- Future Protocol: $4.6M [July] (no future here!)
- Typus Finance: $3.4M [October] (typical, really)
These attacks? Exploit oracles, thin liquidity, and leverage. No code required-just a yacht-sized ego and a crypto wallet. 🛥️
The DeFi dilemma
Traders dubbed Popcat “peak degen warfare.” Because nothing says “progress” like meme coins + DEXs = a playground for wolves in Lambos. 🐺
No circuit breakers? No problem! (Says the guy who just lost his house.) Thin liquidity? Perfect for manipulation! Leverage? Let’s turn $3M into $63M of chaos! 🎢
The whale lost $3M but caused $63M in damage. Hyperliquid paused trading-because even decentralized exchanges panic when the lights go out. 🚨
New risk controls? Sure. But can DeFi balance “permissionless” trading with “not getting scammed”? A question for philosophers… or maybe just mortals with a therapist. 🧠
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2025-11-14 20:31