Ross Ulbricht’s Crypto Wallet Loses $12M on Solana’s Pump.fun

A crypto wallet linked to Ross Ulbricht, the convicted and pardoned founder of the dark web marketplace Silk Road, has lost roughly $12 million due to a liquidity addition error in the Solana-based token creator platform Pump.fun.

According to a tweet thread by market intelligence platform Arkham, the wallet lost the funds after two attempts to provide liquidity for Ross Ulbricht (ROSS) on the automated market maker (AMM) and token launchpad protocol, Raydium.

ROSS was created as part of an advocacy to release Ulbricht from jail or commute his sentence after he was sentenced to two life terms plus 40 years without the possibility of parole. The OG Bitcoiner was convicted of several charges, including drug trafficking, human/sex trafficking, money laundering, computer hacking, and the operation of Silk Road.

Last week, United States President Donald Trump signed an order to fully and unconditionally pardon Ulbricht, keeping to one of his campaign promises to save the convict. Since the Silk Road founder has been released from prison, Arkham could not say if the lost funds were his fault or that of his wallet operator.

Liquidity Addition Error

Arkham explained that Ulbricht’s Solana donation address received 50% of the supply of ROSS from the token’s developer last week. The liquidity addition error has caused the Silk Road founder to lose 40% of that supply.

While trying to provide liquidity on Raydium, the wallet linked to Ulbricht mistakenly created a pool with Raydium’s CPMM (Constant-Product Market Maker) instead of CLMM (Concentrated Liquidity Market Maker). The aim was to add single-sided liquidity to sell the ROSS supply passively; however, the wallet initialized the liquidity pool at the wrong price, causing $1.5 million in ROSS (accounting for 5% of the supply) to be instantly taken by a Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) Bot and sold into an existing pool.

The wallet attempted the process again and lost another $10.5 million worth of ROSS, accounting for 35% of the supply. The bot that took the coins has since sold them for over $600,000, triggering a 90% decline in the token’s price. Data from CoinMarketCap shows the ROSS/SOL pair on Raydium trading for $0.00058 at the time of writing.

Meanwhile, the Ulbricht wallet has successfully added Raydium Concentrated Liquidity, worth about $200,000. Even after losing the 40%, the wallet still holds 10% of the ROSS supply in a separate address.