NFT by ZachXBT accidentally becomes a $15 million meme coin on Base

In a surprising turn of events on the Base network, a meme coin accidentally created by blockchain researcher ZachXBT has reached a market capitalization of $15 million. This happened after the token was automatically converted into a tradable asset by the Zora protocol, despite originally being intended for research archival purposes.

The story behind the coin

ZachXBT, known in the crypto community for his in-depth research on fraud and theft, created this coin in August to document his work on a massive $243 million theft. The intention was to make this information available as free NFTs, a way to permanently record his findings on the blockchain.

What ZachXBT did not know was that Zora’s user interface automatically converted these NFTs into ERC-20 tokens. This allowed these tokens to be traded on decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap. This conversion happened without any prior notification to the creator, a fact that ZachXBT himself brought to light with evidence in the form of screenshots of the Zora interface.

The market reaction and ZachXBT’s response

This new meme coin quickly caught the attention of traders and the value surged to $4,300 each, leading to a market capitalization of $15 million. The price has since dropped to a market capitalization of $4 million, according to DEX Screener.

ZachXBT has expressed his displeasure with the speculative trading, and is now considering reducing the token’s value by issuing more tokens without an end date, and possibly even replacing the artwork with a blank image. His original goal was always to archive research, not to create a speculative trading tool.