5-year Cardano hodler loses 90% of $6.9M ADA in bungled swap

A five-year Cardano holder accidentally torched more than $6 million in ADA after using an illiquid trading pool to facilitate a stablecoin swap.

The trade, first noted by blockchain sleuth ZachXBT on Sunday, saw 14.4 million Cardano (ADA) tokens worth $6.9 million swapped for 847,695 of the US dollar Anzens (USDA) stablecoin, resulting in a loss of approximately $6.05 million.

The Cardano user — with wallet address “addr…4×534” — appeared to make a test transaction of 4,437 ADA for a US dollar stablecoin with the ticker USD at 4:06 pm UTC on Sunday, just 33 seconds before the multimillion-dollar swap to USDA.

Before that, the Cardano wallet address had been dormant since Sept. 13, 2020.

Avoid larger transfers in small liquidity pools at all costs

The bizarre trade highlights the importance of swapping in liquid crypto pools — particularly large orders that can significantly impact prices — to prevent unfavorable execution rates.

The transaction appeared to have contributed to ANZA soaring to nearly $1.26 before falling back to $1.04 at the time of writing, CoinGecko data shows.