What is Rug pull?
A scam where a project's creators hype a token, take investors' money and vanish. If returns sound guaranteed, it's a rug.
A rug pull is the defining scam of small-coin crypto: creators launch a token, market it hard, attract buyers' money into the trading pool — then drain the pool and disappear, leaving a token that cannot be sold at any price. The name is exact: the rug you were standing on ceases to exist.
The warning signs recur with almost boring reliability: anonymous teams, liquidity not locked, one wallet holding a huge supply share, contract functions that let creators mint or block sales (the "honeypot" variant), and marketing pressure built entirely on urgency. Established large-cap coins on regulated exchanges are structurally hard to rug; a days-old token on a decentralised exchange is the natural habitat. The scam playbook covers the whole genre, and the graveyard hosts the aftermath.
See it in practice
Related terms: DeFi · NFT · Seed phrase · full glossary
FAQ
Can I get my money back after a rug pull?
Almost never. The perpetrators are typically anonymous, offshore, and gone; the token has no buyers. Report it (ReportCyber in Australia, and the platform involved), but treat recovery services promising your funds back as the follow-up scam they usually are.
How do I check if a new token is a rug risk?
Ask the structural questions: is the team identified and accountable? Is liquidity locked, and for how long? How concentrated is the supply? Can the contract block selling? If you can't answer these, the honest label for a purchase isn't "investment" — it's a lottery ticket.
General information only, not financial advice. Definitions are maintained in our fact database and reviewed with the daily rebuild.