Three of the worst cryptocurrency rug pulls scams ever

According to blockchain research company Chainalysis, rug pulls or exit scams accounted for about 35% of all cryptocurrency frauds in 2021, syphoning off about $2.8 billion in funds.

You may be familiar with the term "rug pull" if you follow the cryptocurrency market. If not, let's quickly review. Rug pulls are tricks used by scammers to attract investors to their project by promising high returns, but they then disappear with the money, leaving no trace.

Those who are new to the crypto industry might think that such scams must be uncommon, but sadly, that is not the case.

Keeping that in mind, let's examine the most infamous crypto industry scams to date.

OneCoin

In 2014, OneCoin was introduced with the goal of becoming "a better Bitcoin." OneCoin was later revealed to be a sophisticated giant scam posing as a multi-level marketing operation rather than the revolutionary "Bitcoin killer" it had claimed to be. OneCoin was thought to have scammed people out of more than $4 billion.

Thodex

Thodex, a Turkish cryptocurrency exchange, abruptly and without warning ceased operations on April 22, 2021, locking the funds and scamming 391,000 active traders on the platform. Later, the exchange announced via Twitter that this choice had been made because a third-party investment called for the suspension of trading for 4-5 days.

The CEO of Thodex, Faruk Fatih zer, left the country and deleted his social media accounts the day before this development. The business also stopped offering any kind of customer support. The total amount of money scammed by the platform was subsequently estimated to be between $2 and $10 billion.

AnubisDAO

As a component of OlympusDAO, a decentralized reserve currency supported by fees from liquidity providers and bond sales, AnubisDAO was launched in October 2021.

A startling $60 million worth of ETH was scammed from the project's liquidity pool in the first week after launch. This money was originally put up by investors in the token sale, and they got ANKH tokens in return. However, the liquidity in the pool was moved to a different address just twenty hours after the sale, and the money was never recouped.