My First Experience in a "Rug Pull" (Must Read Tips + Tricks for all BSC Users)

in Project HOPE4 years ago

Hey everyone!

Hope you're all enjoying your weekend.

I woke up last Saturday morning, ready for a new day to study for my exams, trade some shitcoins, promote some LAMBO token (intro post), but when I did my routine morning check of prices, I almost shat the bed... (giveaway results at the bottom)

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My First Rug Pull

It turns out the admins decided to call it quits after just less than 2 weeks of development

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My Experience

As I was the largest holder (had 15% of supply across 2 wallets), I spoke with the main dev every day. I mainly gave suggestions regarding their road map, but we also chatted about our lives, talked about ourselves, and he/she even sent me resources to learn solidity! They had AMAs, spent money on an audit (which cost them close to 1% of their market cap at the time) and they gave me daily updates regarding their progress, I thought this thing couldn't be more legit.

Our last chat, he/she didn't even see my final suggestion!
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The main dev even told me to sell some of the token (since some new investors didn't like my wallet holding so much) but I told him since I believed in the project and told some of my mates (sorry guys) about it, I didn't want to dump on them - but maybe the warning was just a little bit of compassion from the devs for what they were about to do next.

They know I am a uni student from Australia, I know they are (supposedly) uni students from Portugal, and since they know my timezone, I believe they waited for me to be asleep (I usually sleep around 2am) and started dumping just before 3am in my local timezone.

When I went to sleep, my stake was worth ~$15k USD market value, and when I woke up I only managed to sell about 1.8 BNB worth (about $1.1k).

Warning Signs From This Project

  • No actual proof of development
  • Anonymous devs (many tokens post random LinkedIn profiles - if their LinkedIn profile doesn't mention the coin back, likely scam)
  • Did not meet their first deadline (meant to reveal more info regarding their first on chain dapp on 5th of May)
  • Dev claimed largest holder (20% at the peak) was his own personal wallet, then it mysteriously dumped about more than half of its net worth one day and the dev then claimed it was his friend's wallet instead
  • Their name was "LAMBO"

Additional Warning Signs in General

  • MOST IMPORTANT: If you are chasing low cap coins (like under $10-50k market cap), always buy a bit and try to sell it before buying more - many coins can ONLY be bought but not sold
    • I'd say 50%+ of new coins shilled on random Telegram groups can only be bought but not sold, so this is most basic first check
  • Talk to the team first if you can to make better decision, post questions on their Telegram and see if they delete or answer
  • Look for audit (most young projects actually won't have one from a legit, so no biggie)
  • Despite LAMBO passing all of the above, they still turned out to be a scam, so always be cautious and look for any additional warning signs as the project develops - if in doubt, likely scam!

What I Learned

Probably nothing lol - but hopefully I will be less greedy and take profits when necessary!

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Well.. their is a first time for everything and thankfully you were not new to the crypto game. Hopefully you will be on the look out more.

Call me lucky that I've been in crypto 4 years and only scammed once haha, but definitely learned a valuable lesson - you never lose money taking profits!!

Sorry to hear this. It seems that it was a "dev dump" type... hope you won't experience exit scams that merely takes your invested money (especially LP tokens, in terms of liquidity provided)

Thanks, and yes, this was a "dev dump" indeed. I always due my due diligence and only invest if the liquidity is locked, but on surface this project looked 100% legit, sadly I was mistaken haha