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Logan Paul sells ultrarare “Pokémon” card to AJ Scaramucci in a record deal

On Sunday, Logan Paul sold his Pikachu Illustrator Pokémon card for a record $16.5 million to AJ Scaramucci, son of former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci. 

The sale price is more than triple what Paul paid to acquire the card five years ago, nearly $5.3 million, a world record at the time. Since then, many of the trading cards have skyrocketed in value, outpacing baseball cards and even Meta.

The sale has drawn controversy in the crypto industry, as Paul had announced in 2022 that the card would be tokenized and listed on his digital collectibles platform, Liquid Marketplace. Since then, the platform has since been accused of “multi-layered fraud in the crypto asset sector,” according to a 2024 filing from Canada’s Ontario Securities Commission. 

“I had originally offered to sell up to 51% of the Illustrator on Liquid Marketplace but ultimately only 5.4% of the card was sold for about $270k in the Summer of 2022 to fractional owners,” Paul wrote on social media. 

“In May 2024, I bought the card back for the same price it was sold for per the terms of LM and made funds available for users to withdraw. I was told that those funds were available to be withdrawn for approximately a year after being deposited in LM users’ accounts,” Paul added.

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Solana drops to price not seen since February as Drift exploit rattles sentiment

Solana has historically seen its largest price declines on Thursdays, and today is no exemption as the crypto industry reels from the over $270 million exploit that occurred yesterday on Drift, a trading venue native to the solana blockchain.

The price of solana has decreased 5.5% to around $78, a level not seen since February, data from CoinGecko shows.

Drift was one of the largest protocols on the solana network by total value locked, which now sits at nearly $245 million. The total value locked on solana has shrunk by nearly $1 billion since the incident, per DefiLlama.

Exploit likely involved from social engineering

The attack, which has turned into a wider contagion event, is unsettling for those in the industry. It did not come from a bug in the protocol’s smart contracts or programs. Humans remain the bottleneck, Mert Mumtaz, cofounder and CEO of solana development firm Helius, said in response to the incident.

The exploit involved unauthorized transaction approvals likely facilitated through social engineering. The sophisticated operation “appears to have involved multi-week preparation and staged execution,” the team said on Thursday. 

Omer Goldberg, founder of risk management firm Chaos Labs, added, The DeFi [decentralized finance] ecosystem continues to grow in scale, but not in operational security.

“Protocols now have custody of hundreds of millions in user funds while depending on admin key setups that would be considered unacceptable in TradFi for a fraction of that AUM [assets under management],” Goldberg wrote on X. 

“Most hacks come down to the simple act of one clicking a link they shouldn’t have clicked. These are picking up in pace, be extra cautious clicking any link or file,” continued Helius Mumtaz.

$270M

April 1 is known as a day for funny pranks. However, a popular trading venue on the solana blockchain, Drift, is suffering from an ongoing exploit today, on-chain data shows.

Drift Protocol is experiencing an active attack. Deposits and withdrawals have been suspended. We are coordinating with multiple security firms, bridges, and exchanges to contain the incident. This is not an April Fools joke,” the team said on social media at 2:58 p.m. ET.

TheBlock reported the exploit is at least $200 million, while blockchain sleuth Lookonchain estimates the figure is $270 million. It could be even more. At this range, the Wednesday hack is among the largest ever, according to the exploits ranking dashboard from Rekt.

Drifts exploit is concerning for those within the crypto industry. Solana treasury firm DeFi Development Corp. allocates a portion of its balance to on-chain strategies to generate yield, including Drift, though the firm announced it had no exposure to the protocol and was not impacted by an alleged exploit affecting the platform, per its press release.

Drift also provides to qualified users sACRED, a derivative token of a tokenized feeder fund that is linked to Apollo Global Management Inc.s traditional Diversified Credit Fund.

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