Bitcoin price remains stable, but altcoins continue to show movement. Recently, a meme coin caused a 9% loss for its investors. The loss from the attack is measured in millions of dollars. Here are the details.
Normie Coin Hacked
Memecoin Normie was attacked, causing its price to drop by over 99% in a minute. Such attacks are not surprising to investors as they occur frequently. Typically, attackers inflate the supply and sell the newly minted tokens, draining all liquidity pools and crashing the price.
This was the case for Normie as well. A flash loan attack caused its market value to plummet from 40 million dollars to 200 thousand dollars. WuBlockchain announced the unfortunate event:
“Memecoin Normie was attacked, causing its price to drop by over 99% in a minute, reducing its market value from 40 million dollars to below 200 thousand dollars. The supply of Normie was significantly increased, and the attacker used a loophole in the contract’s tax mechanism to execute a flash loan attack.”
The price, which lingered around 0.05 dollars, suddenly added several zeros, shocking investors. Those with tens of thousands of dollars in investments were left with only a few dollars.
Meme Coins and Risk
Code auditing is extremely important in cryptocurrencies, but it is often neglected in meme coins. Teams unwilling to bear the thousands of dollars in auditing costs fail to detect such smart contract vulnerabilities, resulting in millions of dollars in losses. This is especially common in meme coins due to their rapid circulation. New meme coins enter circulation daily, and unfortunately, many are just adaptations of smart contracts from other projects.
Thus, the developers may not have full technical competence. Investors need to be aware of these risks and understand that similar issues can repeatedly occur with meme coins. Paying attention to audited and certified smart contracts can reduce (though not entirely eliminate) the risk of waking up to a 99% loss.
Bitcoin is at 69,000 dollars, and altcoins are generally continuing the day in green.