A trader recently lost over $1 million worth of digital assets due to the Normie memecoin exploit.
The trader invested $1.16 million in 11.23 million Normie (NORMIE) memecoins, only to see his investment plummet by over 99% to a mere $150, as reported by Lookonchain on May 26:
“He spent $1.16M to buy 11.23M $NORMIE at $0.1035 from Mar 25 to Apr 9 and has held it until now without selling it.”
Normie, a Base-native memecoin, was hit by a smart contract exploit that slashed over $41.7 million from its market capitalization in just three hours. Lookonchain was the first to alert about the exploit in a May 26 post.
Following the exploit, Normie’s value dropped over 96%, with its market cap hitting a low of around $200,000 before beginning a slight recovery, according to CoinGecko data.
On May 27, the Normie team reportedly agreed to a deal with the hacker to return 90% of the stolen NORMIE tokens.
This agreement required Normie to use the returned funds, along with $2.3 million from the team’s development wallet, to launch a new token to reimburse NORMIE holders.
The hacker stipulated that the token launch must happen before they return the stolen funds, as conveyed in a blockchain message seen by Lookonchain.
“The dev wallet made significantly more than I did during this exploit, and I have no other way to ensure that those funds are used appropriately.”
Following the hacker’s offer, social media was flooded with fake Normie posts, falsely announcing the new token’s relaunch to trick users into clicking fraudulent links.
Over 72,000 Normie holders were affected by the smart contract exploit, initially detected in March, according to a May 26 post by on-chain analytics firm Quick Intel.
Despite this setback, memecoin trading continues unabated, with traders still buying animal-themed cryptocurrencies.
Frog-themed memecoin Pepe hit a new all-time high of $0.00001718 on May 27, rising over 75% in the past week, according to CoinMarketCap data.
Memecoins, lacking intrinsic utility, are among the most volatile digital assets. Yet, some traders profit significantly from this high-risk market.
Two weeks ago, a Pepe trader turned $3,000 into $46 million, achieving a return of over 15,718 times his initial investment, aided by the resurgence of the GameStop saga.
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