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Monday, January 6, 2025
Roughly $32 million sits frozen in smart contracts while Alpha Finance plays musical chairs with company names.
Their first rebrand to Stella failed to wash away $32 million in bad debt.
Their second attempt as LitLayer leaves users staring at immovable balances - forever visible on-chain, forever out of reach.
Through it all, Iron Bank holds user deposits hostage, demanding payment for a 2021 hack that started this death spiral.
Their team blocks whistleblowers, ghosts creditors, and builds fresh empires while their old kingdom burns.
When did changing your name become crypto's favorite getaway car?Read more »
Stories and Articles
• The 14 biggest cybersecurity and cyberattack stories of 2024 [Read more]
• Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade will enable EOAs to function like smart contracts, making smart wallets scalable and bringing better UX and safety for users. [Read more]
• DeFi and onchain protocols collected over $1.5b in total revenue over the past 30 days [Read more]
• Volumes on Decentralized Exchanges Soar to an All-Time High of $478,838,000,000 in December [Read more]
• New details reveal how hackers hijacked 35 Google Chrome extensions [Read more]
Best of Feed
• During times of Tether FUD, it's good to look at the people fudding and how they are aligned with the competition, USDC. | 405 points
• Vitalik Buterin deserves a Nobel prize in economics for his work on crypto and Ethereum. | 283 points
• Countries around the world are already buying and mining bitcoin. If the United States doesn't get in the game, we will fall further behind. | 267 points
• FUN FACT: 15 years ago today, you could buy 150 Bitcoin for $0.1 | 239 points
• Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak explaining why there will never be another Bitcoin | 197 points
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Research of the Week
Phantom Liquidity: How Scammers Fake Volume to Pump and Dump
In DeFi, liquidity is king — or at least, that’s what the scammers want you to believe. You see a pool pumping, token price mooning, and you think you’re early. But the truth? You’re walking into a phantom liquidity trap. That pool? It’s smoke and mirrors. That volume? Manufactured. And by the time you realize it, the scammers are gone, and you’re left holding a bag of worthless tokens.
Here’s how it works. Scammers inject temporary liquidity into a pool, creating the illusion of deep markets and solid trading activity. They pump the token price, sometimes with bot-driven trades bouncing back and forth between wallets, giving the impression that the project is alive and thriving. The goal is simple: bait you into buying. Once enough suckers pile in, the liquidity vanishes faster than free WiFi at a conference. The result? A brutal dump, with no exit liquidity left for you to cash out.
The trick is psychological. High liquidity makes traders feel safe, but in DeFi, trust is a liability. If you don’t verify the liquidity yourself, you’re gambling blind. A pool showing millions in TVL might only have a fraction of that available for trading. The rest? Locked by the devs, ready to disappear.
Spotting phantom liquidity isn’t rocket science, but it takes vigilance. First, check the contract. Verified pools display their liquidity sources on-chain. If it looks sketchy or opaque, assume the worst. Next, watch the trades. If the same wallets are buying and selling repeatedly in small amounts, that’s bot activity—liquidity washing to fake volume. Real liquidity comes from diverse wallets, not a handful of addresses playing hot potato.
Another dead giveaway? Look at the token spread. If price slippage is absurdly low for large trades, something’s off. Real pools fluctuate with size; fake ones hold steady until the rug gets pulled. Also, check if liquidity is locked. No lock? No deal. Scammers love pulling liquidity at peak hype, leaving everyone else scrambling for the exits.
The best defense against phantom liquidity is suspicion. Don’t trust the charts, the website, or the Telegram hype train. Verify everything. Use tools like DEX Screener or Uniswap Info to inspect pool depth and liquidity distribution. And if a project smells like a quick cash grab, walk away — because chances are, it is.
In DeFi, liquidity is either real or it’s bait. If you’re not careful, you’re not trading — you’re donating. The line between a winning trade and getting rekt often comes down to whether you asked the right question: Is this liquidity even real?
Memes and Videos Malone Lam's alleged $230m crypto scamMalone Lam lived fast and scammed faster, swiping $230 million in crypto before blowing it on luxury cars and nightclubs. One minute he’s faking Gemini support calls, the next he’s facing 20 years of hard reality. Lam thought he was untouchable — until reality rugged him harder than any scam ever could. Source: CNA Source: alancarroII
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