From the myth of a hundred times to dropping to zero and rug pulling, how to "legally" rob a bank in the crypto world?

During the bull run, many people made a fortune overnight by buying a certain project, but many others lost everything because the project party executed a rug pull. On June 11, the price of Aura (AURA) skyrocketed from $0.001 to a high of $0.008, with an increase of 800% within a few hours, and the trading volume surged over 115,000% compared to the previous day. David, a well-known crypto assets scam analyst on platform X, warned that this rise could be an organized scam—this crime pattern, known as “Rug Pull,” is sweeping the crypto assets world in an industrialized assembly line manner.

The average profit from a single Rug Pull project is about 1.65 million USD.

By conducting on-chain verification of contracts on the four major public chains, bitsCrunch data shows that as many as 304,000 tokens have experienced varying degrees of Rug Pull, equivalent to hundreds of “trap tokens” being set up on the network every day on average. Supporting this massive eyewash is an astonishingly large fraud gang—266,000 independent deployer addresses are active on Ethereum, specifically engaged in the creation and promotion of fraudulent tokens.

Source: bitsCrunch.com

These “developers” use low-threshold token issuance tools and a large user base to precisely cast their bait. Although the average profit of a single scam project on Ethereum is about 1.65 million dollars, its large base results in a total income of an astronomical figure of 502 billion dollars.

Data source: bitsCrunch.com

The Rug Pull incidents for Polygon and Linea are 530 and 399 respectively. Notably, there is a total attack profit of $10,140 on Polygon. There are 7,680 tokens involved in Rug Pulls, backed by 4,640 active fraudulent deployers. The emerging Linea chain, despite having relatively small data volume, has recorded 4 contracts that were completely drained of liquidity (in the hard Rug Pull section). According to bitsCrunch data, over 7.05 million investors have become direct victims of Rug Pull scams. This means that the wealth of millions of individuals and families has vanished in the trap of Rug Pull.

Types and Time Cycles of Rug Pull

Thoroughly Looted Hard Rug Pull

A hard Rug Pull is a complete robbery where scammers pre-set malicious code and vulnerabilities, subjectively draining the entire liquidity of the project. For example, 0xeeeeeb57642040be42185f49c52f7e9b38f8eeee on Avalanche (17 rugs / 9 LPs, ratio 188.89%), and 0x8f006d1e1d9dc6c98996f50a4c810f17a47fbf19 on Polygon (88 rugs / 6 LPs, ratio as high as 1466.67%).

• Multi-chain cross-border crime

Some addresses (such as 0x8031c44b96ec8c9b66ab16c2c164e8deeb361a3f, 0x16eccfdbb4ee1a85a33f3a9b21175cd7ae753db4) have hard Rug Pull records on both Polygon and Avalanche, committing crimes by utilizing the characteristics of different chains to evade tracking, resulting in the token price plummeting to zero and investors losing all their capital.

Data source: bitsCrunch.com

• High-frequency crimes and “shoot and switch”

Many scam addresses exhibit an extremely high frequency of crime. For example, the address 0xb355f4f4cc84a9429a59d5c2b98d77016f7ec482 on Avalanche is associated with 45 Rug Pull tokens and 37 drained liquidity pools (LPs). Addresses 0x24bcb624082325eff357621a07353a0e38c054f0 on Polygon and 0x234b3fc3ab56f6d52fabb0cfd8efeb2477b0fd3d on Avalanche are both associated with 17 Rug tokens and 18 LPs, a ratio of nearly 95%, showing a highly specialized modality. These addresses are like locusts, deploying tokens in batches, draining them quickly, and then disappearing or changing identities and starting over.

• Token Lifecycle

A large number of hard Rug Pulls have extremely short token life cycles (token_txn_age) as short as 0 days (e.g. 0xb355f4f4…, 0x63dc3ca0… ), 1 day (e.g. 0x16eccfd… ), 3 days (e.g. 0x55b1a124…, 0x8a610bf3… ）。 This confirms scam models such as “Pixiu Disk” - the fraud is completed within a short period of time after the token is launched, and investors are not given any time window to react and exit.

Soft Rug Pull of Boiling Frog

Compared with the violence of hard Rug Pull, soft Rug Pull (usually refers to the removal of about 50% of liquidity) is more subtle and insidious. It does not make the token price instantly go to zero, but creates the illusion of a “slow decline” or “temporary adjustment by the project side”. Scammers may fabricate various reasons (e.g. “migrating contracts”, “upgrading the system”, “dealing with market volatility”), and some investors may not be able to flee in time due to luck or lack of reaction, and eventually suffer heavy losses in the continuous decline. Although this model may not seem as lethal as a hard Rug Pull, it may be more widespread due to its insidious nature and constitute a longer-term, chronic erosion of market confidence. According to bitsCrunch data, the chart below shows some examples of “50% of soft Rug Pull contracts”.

Data source: bitsCrunch.com

the year 2023 has the highest deployment volume of Rug Pull tokens

Based on bitsCrunch’s annual Rug Pull data on the chain from 2020 to 2025, it can be observed that Ethereum’s fraudulent token deployments in 2023 reached an all-time peak of 125,759, accounting for 42.3% of the five-year total. But deployments plummeted to 69,154 in 2024 (down 45% year-over-year). There is a clear cyclical nature of fraudulent activity, with an average of 48,721 annual deployments across the four major chains during 2021/2023. The average lifespan of fraudulent contracts has been reduced from 356 days in 2021 to 3.8 days in 2025.

Data source: bitsCrunch.com

The number of fraudulent tokens and deployers in the hundreds of thousands shows that Rug Pull is no longer a scattered petty theft, but a mature black industry chain with a clear division of labor, tooling, and process. The cost of fraud is extremely low, and the potential “benefits” are huge. Users need to be aware of the common tactics of Rug Pull (high return promises, anonymous teams, no audits, suspicious or missing liquidity locks, social media hype, short-term pulls, etc.). Checking whether the contract is open source, whether it has been audited by a well-known audit institution, whether the team background is verifiable, and whether the liquidity lock-up status should be necessary steps before investing.

Conclusion

The data on Rug Pulls is alarming: hundreds of thousands of fraudulent tokens, hundreds of thousands of scam deployers, trillions of dollars in illegal gains, and over seven million victims… This is not merely a case of investment losses piling up, but a systemic attack on the foundation of trust that the entire blockchain and Crypto Assets industry relies on. Exposing the dark truth of Rug Pulls is not just to warn everyone to pay attention to risks, but also to inspire the entire industry to form a better regulatory system.