rug pull

6 synonyms for rug pull, grouped by meaning and by how common each one is.

Noun — A form of fraud in which the people behind a cryptocurrency project take the money investors have put in and abandon the project, leaving the remaining holders with a worthless or unsellable asset.

Synonyms

Everyday swaps

Common words most readers know — safe in any writing.

fraud

Less common

Still standard English, but they carry more weight.

scam

Rare, literary or technical

Precise, but they will stand out — check the sense before using one.

exit scam swindle defraud fleece

Synonyms by Meaning

1. noun informal

A form of fraud in which the people behind a cryptocurrency project take the money investors have put in and abandon the project, leaving the remaining holders with a worthless or unsellable asset.

“The token lost almost all its value within an hour, and holders quickly concluded it had been a rug pull.”

exit scam scam swindle fraud

2. verb informal

To carry out such a fraud on the people who have invested in a project.

“The anonymous founders rug pulled and deleted every social media account the same day.”

defraud swindle fleece

How to use rug pull

The word patterns that sound natural to a native speaker.

a classic rug pull get rug pulled a slow rug pull rug pull risk

Informal and journalistic. Common in crypto communities and in news reporting about them; not a legal term, though the conduct it describes may amount to fraud.

Etymology

From the English idiom to pull the rug out from under someone, meaning to remove support suddenly and without warning.

Full origin of rug pull →

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a rug pull and a pump and dump?

In a pump and dump, an existing asset's price is inflated by coordinated hype and then sold off by the organisers, but the asset usually continues to exist and trade. In a rug pull, the project itself is abandoned by the people who created it, often by removing the funds that made the token tradable at all. A rug pull therefore tends to leave holders with something they cannot sell.

What is a soft rug pull?

A soft rug pull describes a project whose team quietly stops developing it and withdraws, without an obvious single moment of theft. The value drains away gradually rather than vanishing at once. The term is loose and people disagree about where ordinary project failure ends and a soft rug begins.

Is a rug pull illegal?

Rug pull is a community label rather than a legal category, so the answer depends on the jurisdiction and the facts. Conduct described this way may be prosecuted under existing fraud or securities law, but that is a matter for regulators and courts rather than something the term itself decides.

People also searched

fraud scam fleece swindle defraud

Nearby words

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