The relatively illiquid meme token, BROCCOLI, went through a pump on Binance, following a hacker’s attempt to disguise funds. The hacker’s trades were soon frozen, but traders managed to use leveraged long positions for risky earnings. 

A hacker gave traders an opportunity to earn from an anomalous token rally. The exploiter managed to hack into a market maker account, allowing trades to disguise the origin of funds. 

The new year started with a sudden rally of an otherwise obscure token, BROCCOLI(714). The token broke out from $0.018 to $0.16, later crashing as Binance stopped the trading. Despite this, some traders still went long on the asset during its brief rally.

The token saw a similar reactive price action on its decentralized pair on PancakeSwap.

Hacker tries to shuffle funds through illiquid market

The exploiter used the market maker account to make sets of orders on the spot market, while taking a long position on derivative markets. For that, the relatively obscure BROCCOLI token seemed to be the ideal choice. 

However, even small-scale tokens are closely watched. The sudden moves and relatively clean market orders for BROCCOLI triggered alarms, alerting another trader. 

Alongside the hacker, the trader managed to go long on the meme token, while there were still buy orders. After the orders stopped, the trader flipped to a short position, netting $1M overall.

At the same time, the hacker’s activities were discovered by Binance, and trading for the token was stopped.  

BROCCOLI reacted with short-term pump

BROCCOLI was a former meme sensation based on the dog of Changpeng “CZ” Zhao. As with other meme tokens, the asset slowed down and has not recovered its previous highs. 

The BROCCOLI market reflected the price anomaly, later returning to baseline price action. The token absorbed $10M to $20M in stablecoin liquidity to achieve the pump. 

The price behavior of BROCCOLI raised attention to low-liquidity meme tokens still having market representation on Binance. The exchange will only delist pairs after months of low activity, and some former meme stars may still be available. 

According to the trader, the trading anomaly may not even be a hacker, but instead a market maker or automation bug. The investigation of the trading incident is still ongoing. 

Exchanges have seen other attempts to reawaken illiquid markets, especially during slow trading days. However, BROCCOLI absorbed more significant liquidity and allowed the trader Vida to realize profits with sufficient liquidity.

The trader also explained he had eyes on the BROCCOLI market after being caught in a position during a time of hype for meme assets. The position suddenly turned valuable during the anomalous pump, which set out the trader’s alarms, switching from holding to active trading. 

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