Price Manipulation in Crypto Reaches $42 Million Losses by 2025 as Popcat Unveils DeFi Weaknesses

A recent spike in crypto price manipulation has led to significant financial losses in 2025, with the Popcat meme coin incident showcasing alarming vulnerabilities in decentralized finance (DeFi). Tracking these manipulative events, CertiK has reported a staggering $42 million loss from 51 manipulation cases this year.

Key Takeaways

Major Losses: CertiK has registered 51 incidents of price manipulation in 2025, amounting to total losses of $42 million.
Coordinated Attack: An anonymous trader caused a dramatic 43% crash of Popcat on November 12 by creating false buy walls across 19 wallets, leading to $63 million in liquidations.
Emerging Threat: Price manipulation attacks are the fastest-growing risk in the crypto space in 2025, highlighting serious vulnerabilities in the DeFi system.

Price manipulation attacks have emerged as one of the most significant threats in the cryptocurrency market this year, with the Popcat meme coin crash serving as a severe example of coordinated market distortion. This alarming trend is highlighted in a recent report from CertiK Alert that indicates 51 instances of manipulation have drained a total of $42 million from traders thus far in 2025.

Crypto price manipulation incidence chart
Source: CertiK

The firm has documented 19 manipulation incidents just in the fourth quarter of the year, nearly equating the peak of 20 incidents seen in the second quarter, thus confirming a worrying upward trend that began in the third quarter of 2024.

Crypto price manipulation hits $42M in 2025 as Popcat exposes DeFi vulnerabilities

Inside the Popcat Incident

The Solana-based meme coin, Popcat, became the center of a market manipulation scheme on November 12. An unidentified trader executed a pump-and-dump strategy on the Hyperliquid decentralized perpetuals exchange. The plan involved extracting $3 million from OKX, distributed across 19 wallets, and opening long positions worth $26-30 million with 5x leverage, while establishing a fake $20 million buy wall at $0.21.

This fabricated support drew in retail traders, encouraging them to take long positions. Following this orchestrated rise, the whale pulled out their orders, causing Popcat to plummet by 43% to $0.12 in just a few hours. This drastic decline led to liquidations worth $63 million, including a single loss of $21 million. During this turmoil, Hyperliquid's vault incurred $4.9 million in bad debts, while the trader's collateral vanished.

Broader Patterns of Price Manipulation in Crypto

CertiK’s report identifies the top five victims of manipulation in 2025. These attacks take advantage of vulnerabilities in oracle systems, thin market liquidity, and leverage mechanics. Unlike traditional phishing or code exploits that resulted in $2.5 billion in losses during the first half of the year, manipulation schemes primarily require capital and strategic planning.

The Challenges Facing DeFi

Traders have labeled the Popcat event as “peak degen warfare,” illustrating how meme coins and decentralized exchanges (DEXs) facilitate an ideal environment for manipulation. Most of these platforms do not have circuit breakers or position limits, unlike traditional exchanges that help prevent spiral liquidations.

Although the attacker lost their $3 million investment, they inflicted ten times that amount in damages. Hyperliquid halted operations during the crisis, raising critical questions about decentralization when emergency measures are necessary. While the platform has since imposed stricter risk controls, the challenge remains: can decentralized exchanges find a balance between unrestricted trading and safeguarding against coordinated market attacks?