Ros Ulbricht’s crypto wallets are missing $ 12 million

Cryptocurrency wallets linked to the recently pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht lost $ 12 million due to a mistake in meme-coin trading, according to Arkham Intelligence. According to the researchers, the user who managed these wallets incorrectly created a liquidity pool for the ROSS token on the Raydium decentralized exchange, which led to the instant seizure of assets by the MEV trading bot.

The first mistake cost Ulbricht $ 1.5 million, as 5% of the total supply of the token was instantly bought and sold by a bot specializing in finding profitable opportunities in the blockchain. The second similar miscalculation resulted in the loss of another $ 10.5 million (35% of ROSS tokens), as a pool system called CPMM was created instead of concentrated liquidity (CLMM), which automatically devalued assets.

Due to these mistakes, the ROSS rate fell by 90%, and bots earned more than $ 600 thousand by buying and instantly selling tokens at favorable prices. Despite the losses, the wallets associated with Ulbricht still own 10% of the total coin volume, which is estimated at $ 200 thousand. The addresses of these wallets are listed on FreeRoss.org, an initiative in support of Ulbricht.

Ulbricht was sentenced to two life terms in prison in 2015 for creating and running Silk Road, an online marketplace that used Bitcoin for anonymous payments. on January 22, 2025, US President Donald Trump officially pardoned him, fulfilling one of his cryptocurrency-related campaign promises.