Traders achieve million-dollar profits by capturing market anomalies, revealing liquidity risks of Meme coins

A Precise Market Arbitrage

At the beginning of the new year, a trader named Vida detected a rare price anomaly in the cryptocurrency derivatives market, ultimately earning approximately $1 million. This operation involved the low-liquidity token BROCCOLI714 on the BNB Chain, and the event occurred during the Asian morning hours.

Vida identified the abnormal signal through an automated monitoring system — which continuously tracks large-scale price fluctuations and the spread between spot and perpetual futures markets. When observing tens of thousands of abnormal orders on the order book of the trading pair, Vida realized there might be market manipulation or a system malfunction. According to their description, these large spot buy orders appeared suspicious, triggering a rapid trading response.

Vida’s subsequent strategy was: quickly establishing long positions when prices rose due to buying pressure, then immediately reversing to short once market liquidity normalized, profiting from this brief market imbalance. The entire process was executed via an automated trading system, with trading records showing multiple orders attempting to trade the BROCCOLI714 futures contract.

Questions Behind Market Anomalies

Regarding the origin of this incident, initial reports circulated online suggesting that the account was hacked. However, the relevant platform later issued a statement denying this, asserting that its security measures and risk control systems were functioning normally, with no signs of platform intrusion or account leaks.

However, Vida remains skeptical of the official explanation. They pointed out that using tens of millions of USDT in spot trading to perform such operations resembles a reckless charity-driven pump, and this abnormal behavior may reflect deeper structural issues within the market ecosystem. This suspicion has prompted discussions about the trading environment of low-liquidity tokens and the transparency of order books.

Meme Coin Boom Drives Record On-Chain Activity

In the context of the current timeframe, the BNB Chain is experiencing a Meme coin wave. These tokens, inspired by well-known industry figures and related to pets, have quickly gained popularity on the chain, boosting overall network activity.

According to on-chain data platform Nansen, the number of daily active addresses on the BNB Chain was less than 1 million at the start of the year, but as Meme coin popularity surged, activity grew rapidly. By mid-September, the number of active addresses on BNB Chain had become comparable to Solana. Part of this growth is due to traders and participants shifting to BNB Chain after similar tokens on Solana declined in popularity.

By the end of 2024, the daily active user count on BNB Chain surpassed 2.6 million, ranking second in total active addresses and trading volume for the year. This data clearly reflects the real impact of the Meme coin phenomenon on the on-chain ecosystem — attracting a large user base through low-cost, highly engaging tokens.

Market Insights

This incident and the accompanying industry data reveal a current reality in the crypto asset market: assets with low liquidity and those on non-mainstream chains carry higher risks of market anomalies. Traders are leveraging technical means to capture these fleeting imbalance opportunities, while platforms need to further improve their trading monitoring and risk management systems, especially in areas like order book transparency and abnormal trade detection.

Meanwhile, the explosive growth of Meme coins has brought increased user activity to the blockchain ecosystem but also exposed potential liquidity risks and price manipulation vulnerabilities in such asset trading environments. Participants should remain vigilant for abnormal signals when chasing high-yield opportunities.