1/ One of the lesser known figures in the space is Darkpool Liquidity a market maker (MM)
After reviewing the pitch deck there were a number of services that are straight market manipulation and not standard at ALL by MMs in the space
They play a role in a lot of the cash grabs
2/ To summarize the pic above:
-offers washtrading to artifically boost volume
-frontrunning and selling assets w/o affecting the market price
-spoofing
Well the next question is who even uses this MM?
3/ Well mostly Polkastarter projects use this MM as well as a number of other launchpads on here
One thing a lot of these projects have in common is large unlocks at TGE, vesting for 6 months or less, & a huge % of token supply to the seed/private round & advisors (20-30%+)
4/ After speaking with a few people well versed in the MM space they said it was very surprising this verbiage would be used so openly in a pitch deck
The rest seems to be almost copied from some where since it’s very generic
5/If you have done 50+ projects you more than likely should have $5m+ in AUM
Unless you’re not the main MM or just are a bad negotiator
6/ It is pretty clear what is being done here… please stay folks and do proper DD before putting your $$$ into projects
1/ In late 2023 a former Yuga Labs security researcher was stopped at the airport after law enforcement mistakenly linked them to a $1.1M phishing theft from a Bored Ape owner.
Here’s an investigation into where the stolen funds went and who’s actually responsible.
2/ In Dec 2022, a victim had 14 X BAYC NFTs phished in a social engineering scheme where purchased X accounts were used to convince the victim they wanted to license the IP rights for a film.
The scammer directed the victim to a phishing site where they had them sign a message draining their assets.
3/ In Sep 2023, Sam Curry a well known whitehat and former Yuga Labs security engineer was detained at the airport by law enforcement for questioning and was served with a grand jury subpoena (later dropped).
In reality as part of his security work at Yuga, he had been investigating the theft and used a private key put in the JavaScript of the website by the threat actor.
LE then had mistakenly reviewed logs from OpenSea which included his home IP address and used this to incorrectly link him as the suspect.
1/ An investigation into the alleged identity of the mysterious Hyperliquid whale tied to illicit activity that profited ~$20M via highly leveraged positions over the past couple weeks.
2/ A trader opened multiple highly leveraged positions on Hyperliquid and GMX from Jan - Mar 2025.
They gained lots of attention this month after two onchain trades:
-Large ETH & BTC long position on 50X leverage just before Trump’s crypto reserve announcement by 0xe4d3 ($10M profit)
-Large BTC short position on 40X leverage by 0xf3F4 ($9M profit)
3/ I went and identified the main counterparties of 0xf3f:
1/ Over the past few months I imagine you have seen many Coinbase users complain on X about their accounts suddenly being restricted.
This is the result of aggressive risk models and Coinbase’s failure to stop its users losing $300M+ per year to social engineering scams.
2/ Myself and @tanuki42_ spent time reviewing Coinbase withdrawals and gathering data from my DMs for high confidence thefts on various chains.
Below is a table we created which shows $65M stolen from Coinbase users in Dec 2024 - Jan 2025.
Our number is likely much lower than the actual amount stolen as our data was limited to my DMs and thefts we discovered on-chain which does not account for Coinbase support tickets and police reports we do not have access to.
3/ Let’s walk through how these Coinbase social engineering scams work.
A victim reached out to me last month after losing ~$850K.
Graphing out this theft lead to a consolidation address with 25+ other victims tied to ‘coinbase-hold.eth’.
1/ An investigation into how the threat actor Serpent went from a pro Fortnite player to helping steal $3.5M via meme coin scams launched from 9+ account compromises on X & IG and gambling the proceeds away at online casinos.
2/ Serpent (SerpentAU) is a former pro Fortnite player from Australia who was released from the esports organization ‘Overtime’ after being caught allegedly cheating in June 2020.
He then co-founded the NFT project DAPE in March 2022 which later rug pulled.
3/ In March 2024 Serpent launched another project called ERROR which rug pulled and got him banned from X.
1/ Over the past few months I have been tracking a series of related compromises for McDonald’s, Usher, Kabosu Owner, Andy Ayrey, Wiz Khalifa, SPX 6900, etc on X & IG which has resulted in an estimated $3.5M+ stolen via launching Pump Fun meme coins.
2/ On Aug 21, 2024 the McDonald’s IG became compromised and a post was made promoting the bundled meme coin GRIMACE and the hacker began trolling after.
$690K+ from the pump and dump was consolidated to two wallets.
3/ On Sep 3, 2024 the McDonalds attacker transferred 101.5 SOL to two addresses which deployed and sniped SCHRADER after the Actor Dean Norris had his X account hacked.
1/ An investigation into the social engineering scammer Ronaldd (Ronald Spektor) who allegedly helped steal $6.5M last month from a single victim by impersonating Coinbase support.
2/ A US based victim sent me a DM on Oct 7, 2024 after receiving a call from a spoofed number impersonating Coinbase support where they were coerced in to using a phishing site.
3/ An initial tracing of the theft saw all of the stolen funds flow to eXch on Ethereum and Bitcoin where funds were converted to Litecoin and transferred to numerous services.