"Ulbricht's Crypto Portfolio Plunges $12M in Raydium Trading Mistake"

Ross Ulbricht, the former operator of the Silk Road dark web marketplace, has faced a significant setback in his cryptocurrency portfolio. Wallets linked to Ulbricht experienced a $12 million loss due to a trading mistake on the Raydium platform, a decentralized exchange operating on the Solana blockchain.

The incident occurred on January 29, 2025, just a week after Ulbricht received a presidential pardon from Donald Trump on January 22. The wallets in question, verified by Arkham Intelligence, held 50% of the total supply of ROSS tokens, which were created as a show of support for Ulbricht following his release from prison.

The trading mistake involved the creation of the wrong type of liquidity pool on the Raydium platform. Instead of setting up a Concentrated Liquidity Market Maker (CLMM) pool, which allows traders to set specific prices, the wallet controller mistakenly created a Constant-Product Market Maker (CPMM) pool.

This initial error resulted in approximately 5% of the ROSS token supply being made available at prices far below market value. A Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) bot quickly identified the opportunity and purchased 398.6 million tokens, worth about $1.5 million at regular market prices, for just $556.

The situation worsened when the wallet controller made a second attempt to add single-sided liquidity, leading to roughly 35% more of the total ROSS supply being sold at unfavorable prices. The same MEV bot capitalized on this mistake, selling the acquired tokens for 2,669 SOL, approximately $643,000.

The combined errors resulted in a dramatic 90% price drop for the ROSS token, with values falling from $0.039 SOL to $0.0036 SOL per token within just two hours. Despite the initial price crash, the ROSS token later rebounded, showing a 735% increase in value within 24 hours.

The trading volume for ROSS tokens showed increased activity following the incident, reaching $508,270 after a 24% surge in trading activity. This suggests ongoing market interest despite the price volatility. Currently, the Ulbricht-linked wallets retain approximately 10% of the total RO