Crypto Rug Pulls: The Biggest NFT Scams Yet

Crypto rug pulls are extremely popular nowadays, riding the same wave of popularity with the wide reach of NFTs and cryptocurrency around the world.

Investing in cryptocurrency has always had its own set of risks associated with it. Numerous people who got in the industry very early are now reaping their rewards.

However, it is also undeniable that numerous scams have affected people causing them to lose insurmountable money in the market.

With that, here are the four biggest NFT scams and crypto rug pulls that have happened recently as reported by Gizmodo.

Mercenary

First on the list for NFT scams is Mercenary, a medieval-themed NFT game with play-to-earn features and a new cryptocurrency token called Mercenary Gold, which was released this month. To get more people interested, the Mercenary scammers sponsored advertising on Twitter with crypto news outlets like BSC News.

However, it was all a hoax. A business that records rug pulls and other fraud in the crypto industry, the scammers behind Mercenary Gold got away with at least $760,000.

Mercenary’s social media accounts have been deleted, and even cached versions on Google Cache and the Internet Archive appear to be empty. However, the game has a lengthy history of paid marketing on Twitter. And as a fun attraction, its 8-bit aesthetic looked quite realistic. Regrettably, it turned out to be a complete scam.

Big Daddy Ape Club

The second biggest crypto rig pull is Big Daddy Ape Club appeared to be a parody or rip-off of the far more famous Bored Ape Yacht Club, possibly the most successful NFT project in the world, at first glance.

While celebrities such as Paris Hilton, Jimmy Fallon, and Gwyneth Paltrow have expressed interest in Bored Ape, the Big Daddy Ape Club will not be featured on the Tonight Show anytime soon.

As reported by Decrypt, according to the Twitter account NFT Gurus, the scammers behind Big Daddy Ape Club were able to persuade users to try to “mint” their NFT for a premium of 1 Solana, which at the time cost roughly $135. The deal would fall through, but the Solana would go through.

The con artists were able to convince at least 9,041 people to try their bite of the ape rip-offs, netting them over $1.2 million. This isn’t the scammer’s first rodeo, as SolRarity points out.

Based on the wallets into which the money was sent, this is at least the third scam perpetrated by the individual or people behind the Big Daddy Ape Club.

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Kingfund Finance

Third, on the list of crypto rug pulls is Kingfund Finance, which debuted in late 2021 and ripped the rug out early this month, emptying 300 Wrapped BNB coins (valued at around $141,000 at the time).

Due to the Wayback Machine, investors can take a look at the website since its original social media accounts, including Twitter have then vanished.

The bare-bones approach to King Fund Finance is highly noticeable, unlike the multiple fancy NFT websites here in 2022.

The website isn’t flashy and pleasing, but whoever created it was able to make a lot of money by posing as a legitimate bitcoin company.

Blockverse

Lastly, another Crypto rug pull is an NFT game called Blockverse. Blockverse NFT, is a play-to-earn NFT game allegedly based on the Minecraft universe.

Through OpenSea, investors could buy Blockverse characters, and a cryptocurrency called $Diamond was developed to go along with the idea.

The project’s developers got off with an estimated $1.2 million of funds this month.

Unfortunately, the investors withdrew all of the real money put in Blockverse and vanished, destroying the project’s Discord and Twitter in the process.

The project’s website has also been removed, although a snapshot recorded on the Internet Archive on January 12 is still accessible.

In addition, skeptic signs have been seen throughout the project, in fact, the website contains numerous spelling errors, such as “Cosemetic & Equippable Item Minting,” which are just a few of the red signs that potential NFT investors should be aware of if they don’t want to be duped.

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