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This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, <\/em>subscribe<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Crypto\u2019s \u201cwartime<\/a>\u201d shtick isn\u2019t an exaggeration.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s brutal out here even in a bull market \u2014 as recently-pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht has apparently just found out.<\/p>\n As there are very real conflicts happening around the world right now, gaming might<\/em> be the better analogy.\u00a0<\/p>\n There are two major types of online multiplayer experience: player vs. player (PvP) \u2014 Street Fighter, StarCraft, CounterStrike \u2014<\/em> and player vs. environment (PvE) \u2014 Helldivers 2, Diablo 4, World of WarCraft.<\/em><\/p>\n Ulbricht (or at least whoever is in control of his Solana donation wallet) recently suffered a quintessential PvE experience in crypto:<\/p>\n It\u2019s been characterized as a $12 million loss, but that isn\u2019t really true. The tokens were free, so any cash generated from selling would\u2019ve been pure profit.\u00a0<\/p>\n The wallet still held 10% of the supply as of Thursday evening, currently worth about over $1 million.<\/p>\n And ok, the MEV bot is controlled by a real person. But considering this particular fumble was mostly due to a misconfigured liquidity pool, I\u2019d say this incident was pure PvE.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in an adjacent corner of crypto, there\u2019s someone going all out on the PvP experience.<\/p>\n Coinbase director Conor Grogan earlier this week pointed to a single address responsible for launching around 18,000 different tokens via pump.fun.<\/p>\n Every day, the person controlling that address appears to \u201cwake up and create on average ~a dozen of tokens an hour until they go to bed, and then do it again, every day. They\u2019ve done this for months,\u201d Grogan wrote on X, who commented it seems the launches are manual and not automated.<\/p>\n The implication is that whoever controls the address is dumping the coins on whoever might buy them, rugging each time \u2014 total PvP behavior.<\/p>\n So far, the address has executed nearly 6.8 million trades with a 55.6% win rate, so they\u2019re probably profitable.\u00a0<\/p>\n It could also be they\u2019re farming a potential future pump.fun airdrop, in which case the profits would be effectively compounded if they\u2019re eligible.\u00a0<\/p>\n You might not like it, but this is what peak crypto performance looks like in 2025.<\/p>\n On the other hand, it\u2019s hard to blame Ulbricht, if it really is him controlling the wallet. When was arrested there were just 36 cryptocurrencies<\/a> and only 16 had a market cap over six figures.\u00a0<\/p>\n Something tells me he\u2019ll catch up quickly.<\/p>\n Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter<\/a> \u2014 market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.<\/strong><\/p>\n
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