10 Biggest Crypto Rug Pulls

Learn about the biggest crypto rug pulls to date, including how much investors lost and how the scam worked, so you know red flags to avoid in the future.

Rug pulls remain, unfortunately, commonplace in the crypto market, with an estimated $500 million lost to rug pulls last year alone. Our guide is a comprehensive list of rug pulls in crypto, including the biggest rug pulls, to help you see how the scams work and spot the red flags to avoid them.

1. BitConnect

Bitconnect was one of the first and most infamous rug pulls. Back in 2016, the Bitconnect ICO launched. Investors traded Bitcoin for Bitconnect Coin (BCC) and in return received high yields, supposedly guaranteeing up to 40% returns each month.

Aggressive marketing efforts attracted more and more investors. If you were in the crypto market at the time, you'll remember this spawning the notorious Bitconnect meme.

The value of BCC peaked at more than $400 in December 2017. Around this point, both the UK and US governments began to take notice after growing accusations that BCC was little more than a Ponzi scheme. In January 2018, Bitconnect shut down, BCC prices crashed by 92%, and the creators made off with more than $2 billion.

2. Squid Game

Riding the popularity of the Netflix show, a new token called SQUID launched. The token was marketed as a play-to-earn game. It started selling at $0.01, and in less than a week, the price soared to $2,861.

But when investors attempted to cash out their gains, they found they couldn’t sell. A few users began investigating and discovered the project’s founders were absent from all major platforms like LinkedIn. Those who tweeted about their concerns were blocked, while the Telegram and Discord groups were suddenly shut down. Further review of the whitepaper revealed several outlandish claims that were impossible to verify.

Soon after, the founders began selling their supply, causing the token’s price to plummet by 99% in just a week. Investors were left holding worthless tokens, and the developers reportedly made over $3.38 million from the rug pull.

3. Bored Bunny NFT rug pull

The Bored Bunny NFT project was announced in December 2021, making it one of the more recent rug pulls. Like many others, it launched with bold claims including branded merchandise, a private metaverse, 10x investment returns in just days, and endorsements from celebrities like Floyd Mayweather, Jake Paul, and David Dobrik.

The project sold out within hours, bringing in around 2,000 ETH in primary sales. However, a blockchain investigator later discovered that the NFTs supposedly owned by celebrities were actually purchased by a developer wallet linked to the project. This fueled allegations of insider trading. Further research also revealed that many of the project’s founders had been previously involved with other questionable ventures.

Since launch, the floor price of Bored Bunny NFTs has dropped significantly, now sitting at just 0.085 ETH.

4. Frosties

Another NFT rug pull, Frosties launched in early 2022 with a collection of 8,888 NFTs that quickly sold out. The project brought in roughly $1.3 million, but as soon as the funds were received on OpenSea, they were transferred to different wallets. The Discord server was deleted, and the project’s Twitter posted a final message that simply said, “I’m sorry.”

What makes Frosties particularly notable is that the founders were actually arrested. U.S. authorities charged Ethan Nguyen and Andre Llacuna with wire fraud and money laundering in connection with the rug pull. It marked one of the first times anyone was prosecuted for an NFT scam, and if convicted, they face up to 20 years in prison.

5. Luna Yield

Luna Yield (LUNY) was a yield aggregator on the Solana blockchain. It was marketed as a legitimate DeFi project and gained credibility due to its association with other trusted projects like SolPad. As a result, it attracted a substantial amount of capital during its Initial DEX Offering (IDO).

Just three days after the IDO, all the funds raised were transferred to Tornado Cash, an anonymizing crypto mixer. Soon after, the Luna Yield website and social media channels were taken offline. The estimated total stolen was around $6.7 million.

What made Luna Yield unique is that it didn't use the typical flashy tactics of many scams. It looked professional, had legitimate partnerships, and didn't make outrageous promises, which made it especially deceptive for investors.

6. OneCoin

Launched in 2014 by Ruja Ignatova, OneCoin was marketed as a revolutionary cryptocurrency and a future rival to Bitcoin. It promised huge returns and claimed to operate on a private blockchain, though in reality, no blockchain ever existed. Instead, the project ran as a global multi-level marketing scheme, where investors bought educational packages and earned commissions by recruiting others.

The scam spread rapidly across more than 175 countries, with flashy events and heavy marketing. By the time authorities caught on, OneCoin had raised over $4 billion. In 2017, Ignatova disappeared shortly before U.S. charges were unsealed and remains missing to this day. She is currently on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. Co-founder Sebastian Greenwood was arrested and sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2023 for his role in the scheme.

7. Thodex

Thodex was a Turkish cryptocurrency exchange that abruptly halted trading in April 2021, locking hundreds of thousands of users out of their accounts overnight. Shortly after, CEO Faruk Fatih Özer fled the country, allegedly taking around $2 billion in investor funds with him. The sudden disappearance sparked widespread outrage and a national investigation.

Authorities later confirmed that Özer had escaped to Albania, where he was arrested in 2022 following an international warrant. After being extradited to Turkey, he was found guilty of fraud, money laundering, and running a criminal organization. In 2023, he was sentenced to an astonishing 11,196 years in prison; a symbolic figure under Turkish law meant to reflect the scale of the crime.

Thodex stands out as one of the largest centralized exchange rug pulls in crypto history, not just for the size of the theft, but for the dramatic international manhunt that followed.

8. Mutant Ape Planet (MAP) NFTs

Mutant Ape Planet (MAP) was an NFT collection that closely resembled the popular Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC), but it turned out to be a scam. The project raised $2.9 million from investors with promises of rewards, raffles, metaverse land, exclusive crypto asset access, and a community wallet to support future development. None of those benefits ever materialized.

After selling out the collection, the developers transferred the funds to wallets controlled by the project’s creator, Aurelien Michel, a 24-year-old French citizen living in the UAE. Michel later admitted to the rug pull in the project’s Discord under the pseudonym “James.”

He was arrested upon arrival at JFK Airport in New York and charged with wire fraud. According to blockchain investigator ZachXBT, Michel is also suspected of being involved in other NFT scams, including Fashion Ape and Crazy Camels, potentially bringing his total haul into the millions.

9. HAWK (Hawk Tuah Girl Coin)

Launched in December 2024 by internet personality Haliey “Hawk Tuah Girl” Welch and promoted heavily on social media, the $HAWK memecoin skyrocketed to an initial market cap of around $490 million, only to crash over 90% within hours.

On‑chain data revealed that just 3-4% of the supply was available for public sale, while ten wallets held most of it prior to launch. Many of these insider wallets began dumping tokens almost immediately, netting early sellers around $3 million and causing the token’s value to collapse by more than 90 percent.

Despite Welch’s denial of wrongdoing and assertions that her team sold no tokens, investigators and analysts cited the supply imbalance and rapid sell-offs as strong indicators of a classic pump‑and‑dump. A class-action lawsuit was filed, and a complaint has been lodged with the SEC, though Welch herself was not named as a defendant. She later stated she received only a marketing fee and was cleared legally of wrongdoing, while the broader scandal remains a cautionary tale of influencer-backed token launches.

10. CryptoZoo

CryptoZoo was a play-to-earn NFT project promoted by YouTuber Logan Paul in 2021. The game promised users the ability to buy NFT eggs that would hatch into hybrid animals, which could then be used to earn rewards through a custom in-game economy. The project raised millions through NFT and token sales but never delivered a working product.

Buyers were left with unusable NFTs, and the ZOO token quickly lost nearly all its value. Allegations emerged that key developers were unpaid or had shady histories, and wallets tied to the project team had sold off large amounts of tokens. Logan Paul initially denied responsibility but later offered to refund affected buyers. A class-action lawsuit followed, accusing the team of misleading investors and executing a rug pull. CryptoZoo has since become a high-profile example of how celebrity-backed crypto projects can go very wrong.

Rug pull red flags to watch for:

Anonymous or unverified teams
Unlocked or immediately withdrawable liquidity
Vague roadmaps or missing development details
Unrealistic return promises and aggressive hype

Realise your losses for tax benefits

If you’ve been the victim of a rug pull, there’s a small silver lining in your tax bill. You can offset your losses to reduce your overall taxable gains and pay less tax, but first, you need to realize your loss in order to offset it.

For rug pulls, this means disposing of your tokens by any means necessary, like selling, trading, or sending your tokens to a burn wallet, even if it’s for a negligible value. Learn more in our rug pulls guide.

Koinly’s tax optimization dashboard can help you identify your unrealized losses from rug pulls and simulate the impact that disposing of the tokens would have on your tax bill. Best of all, it’s free to try.