Fraudsters have launched nearly 120,000 tokens since the beginning of the year
From the beginning of 2022 to December 1, 117,629 fraudulent tokens related to rug pull schemes have appeared on the market. That's about 15 scam projects every hour, Solidus Labs estimates.
"Over the past five years, rug pull scams have evolved from a small problem into a major epidemic in which fraudulent token developers have stolen billions of dollars from millions of retail investors," the experts stressed.
Fraudsters have launched nearly 120,000 tokens since the beginning of the year
Total number of fraudulent tokens by year. Data: Solidus Labs.
Among the networks, BNB Chain is the most popular among scammers: about 12% of the total BEP-20 token issue is accounted for by scam projects. Ethereum's figure is 8%.
Almost 2 million investors became victims of rug pull schemes during the period. This compares to the total number of victims of four major bankruptcies in the industry - FTX, BlockFi, Celsius and Voyager (~2.3 million people).
Fraudsters have launched nearly 120,000 tokens since the beginning of the year
Total number of victims of fraudulent tokens and major cryptocurrency bankruptcies. Data: Solidus Labs.
The most popular type of fraudulent token was the so-called honeypot. The smart contract of such a coin closes the possibility of its resale by the buyer. The most famous example was Squid Game, in which investors lost $3.3 million.
Scammers have also often resorted to hidden issuance of additional token volume or ownership transfer scams.
Scammers have launched nearly 120,000 tokens since the beginning of the year
Number of fraudulent tokens issued by type of scam. Data: Solidus Labs.
According to Solidus Labs experts, scam token developers used 153 different centralized crypto platforms to fund projects and withdraw money. Their combined transactions on these exchanges since September 2020 totaled $11 billion in Ethereum. Almost $4 billion of this amount was accounted for by platforms registered in the United States.
