Investment Tragedy: From $10,000 to $3 in Just a Few Seconds Because of Meme PENGU

The launch of PENGU, a memecoin based on the Solana platform and linked to the popular NFT collection Pudgy Penguins, has caused a stir in the cryptocurrency market this week. While some investors have made huge profits, an unfortunate trader found themselves in a ironic situation, losing almost all of their investment in an instant. PENGU ‘Vaporizes’ Investment Money in the Blink of an Eye When PENGU officially launched, this token quickly reached a fully diluted market capitalization of over 3.5 billion USD in just two hours, with a trading volume of 290 million USD. However, not everyone is able to seize this opportunity. A trader tried to exchange 45 Solana (about 10,000 USD) for PENGU on the Jupiter platform, but instead of receiving a significant amount of tokens, they only received 78 PENGU tokens worth less than 3 USD.

Costly Mistakes Causes The error occurred because the investor accidentally traded through an unofficial liquidity pool on Raydium. Low liquidity combined with automatic pricing mechanisms on DEXs causes token prices to be pushed unusually high. Careless market value checks have trapped investors in slippage. As a result, PENGU’s market capitalization was inflated to 14 trillion USD, a completely unrealistic figure. Warning From Experts An anonymous trader with the nickname crea commented: This is a valuable lesson. Someone created a fake liquidity pool before, and this trade jumped into that pool. Investors often use bots to ‘sniper’ tokens as soon as they are launched, hoping to buy them at the lowest price. However, in this case, the strategy backfired. The trader may not have used a bot or may have overlooked contract verification and market value. Lesson for Crypto Investors This is a wake-up call for investors, especially in the volatile memecoin sector: Always carefully check the smart contract and verify the liquidity pool before trading. Avoid FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) when a token has just launched as this is the most prone time for pricing errors. Will PENGU become a successful memecoin or just a short-term story? For investors like this, it may be a lifelong lesson!