Chinese trader and founder of Equation News, Vida, announced on the X platform that he allegedly earned approximately $1 million from the hacking incident involving the BROCCOLI714 token.
Vida stated that he profited from the imbalance between spot and futures prices by detecting unusual price movements early.
According to Vida, when the BROCCOLI714 price rose by more than 30% in 60 minutes, he immediately closed his previously established arbitrage positions. Initially worth $500,000 each, his hedge positions reached $800,000 on the spot market and $500,000 on the futures market. By closing all his arbitrage positions instantly, Vida made a profit of $300,000.
Vida then noticed a large $5 million buy order with a 10% buy depth on the BROCCOLI714 spot market on Binance. In contrast, there were only $50,000 buy orders on the futures contract with the same depth. At that time, BROCCOLI714’s market capitalization in the main order book was $40 million, and total buy orders were at $26 million. According to Vida, this indicated either that a user account had been compromised or that there was a serious error in the market maker software.
Vida suspected that the $26 million in funds in the spot order book was being used to inflate the spot price, thereby driving up the futures contract price, and then exit the futures market. He predicted that the price would continue to rise unless the hacker withdrew the buy orders on the spot side.
During this process, Vida attempted to buy BROCCOLI714 USDT perpetual futures contracts every 5-10 seconds via the trading terminal. The execution of these orders indicated that the circuit breaker protection period for the contract had expired, creating a liquidation risk. Seizing the opportune moment, Vida added a long position of approximately $200,000 at an average cost of $0.046.
According to Vida, the hacker’s subsequent partial deactivation of the order book signaled the activation of the risk control unit. Vida began selling all his long positions in BROCCOLI714 spot and futures without regard to cost. Adding another $200,000 to his initial $200,000 position, he now has a total of $1.5 million in cash.
Vida later confirmed that the hacker had completely emptied the order book, and this time he opened a $400,000 short position at approximately $0.065, closing the position when the price dropped to around $0.02.
However, it’s important to remember that in the already high-risk cryptocurrency market, using leverage carries a very high probability of users losing all their assets, including their principal.
*This is not investment advice.
