The cryptocurrency market has become the foremost target for malicious actors, and a report published by DappRadar notes that the incidence of rug pulls has grown by more than 6,499% from $90 million recorded in the same period last year.
In very simple words, crypto rug pulls are a type of investment scam in which the creator of specific projects disappears with the entire funds collected from the investors.
The report of DappRadar underlines that since the beginning of this year, the crypto market has had around $6 billion in rug and pull incidents. DaapRadar also said that 92% of the total loss from rug pull is attributed to the sudden collapse of the OM token.
DappRadar’s analyst Sara Gherghelas said, “ This shift suggests that rug pulls are becoming less frequent, but far more devastating when they do occur.”
Rug pull remains most common in memecoin in 2025
Sara further notes that rug pull incidents in 2024 were recorded more in DeFi protocols, NFT projects, and memecoin projects, yet since the beginning of 2025, memecoins remain at the top in terms of rug pull incidents.
The report of DaapRadar said high-profile rug pulls like the Libra token, which was based on the Solana blockchain, has wiped out 100s of millions from the crypto market.
Sara quotes, “ Rug pulls and exit scams remain a persistent threat, especially in ecosystems where projects can rapidly gain traction through hype, only to disappear with user funds overnight.”
She also highlights that, “ Despite increasing awareness and more tools to detect suspicious behavior, rug pulls remain a recurring issue, particularly in DeFi and newly launched token ecosystems.”
Bad actors defaming the reputation of crypto
Over the years, hackers, scammers, and fraudsters have continued to trouble the crypto market, and every year, the market is losing more than $10 billion in digital assets, which is ultimately hindering the expansion of the market.
Bad actors are not only the ones who trouble the crypto market by hacking or scamming, but also the ones who trouble the market by using crypto for buying, selling, and trading illicit items like weapons, drugs, and, over time, it has been mainly used for human trafficking.
In the years 2023 and 2024, it has been reported hundreds of times that authorities have seized crypto used for terrorist activities worldwide, and in the initial phase of the Russia and Ukraine war, USDT worth billions of U.S dollars were seized.
Crypto market price updates
As of writing, the crypto market cap was $2.66 trillion, and the crypto fear and greed index was at 32, still indicating fear in the sentiments of the market. Yet compared to April 17, 2025 a recovery of 2 points has been noted in the fear and greed rating.
Bitcoin is exchanging hands at $84,231 with a surge of 3.21% in a week, but despite this surge, it is down by 12% in the year-to-date time frame and has lost around 19% in the past three months.
According to data from CoinMarketCap, the intraday gainers list has been ruled by Bittensor, Artificial Superintelligence Alliance, Pancakeswap, Four, Immutable, The Sandbox, and Algorand.
