This isn't the first sign of shakiness at Abra, which was alleged to be insolvent by the Texas state securities regulator in 2023. The company wound down its US operations in mid-2023 and refunded $82 million to US customers, after reaching a settlement with 25 state regulators. Abra also faced a lawsuit from the US federal securities regulator in 2024, which they settled in August of that year.
Crypto lender Abra pauses withdrawals for international customers
The Abra cryptocurrency lender sent an email to customers announcing that "Abra Earn international services are currently paused, effective immediately", attributing the decision to "broader risk management efforts" and saying it was "influenced by external circumstances outside of our control". This has raised concern among Abra customers, and carries troubling echoes of the wave of crypto lenders pausing withdrawals before they collapsed during the 2022 "crypto winter".
Founder of Zerebro token fakes his death, promotes new "legacy" coin
On May 4, 22-year-old Zerebro founder Jeffy Yu published a blog post introducing "legacoins" — a version of memecoins he said would be used to "define the legacy" of those who had died. Several days later, Yu's Twitter account announced that a "deadman's switch" had triggered the launch of his own "legacoin", $LLJEEFFY. Elsewhere, a video appeared to record Yu's suicide, and an obituary describing him as a "martyr of imagination and creativity" appeared on Legacy.com.
It wasn't long, however, before people began to speculate that Yu had faked his death. Wonderland CEO Daniele Sestagalli published a letter he said he had privately received from Yu, where he confessed to faking his death and described it as his "only viable exit from persistent harassment, blackmail, and threats". Others noted that wallets belonging to Yu had been cashing out $ZEREBRO tokens priced at around $1.3 million.
Reporters from the San Francisco Standard ultimately located Yu at his parents' house, where he was "agitated and shocked that he had been found after some routine internet searches", and "declined to talk about the false report of his death or how he may have benefited financially from it."
- "A crypto founder faked his death. We found him alive at his dad's house", San Francisco Standard [archive]
- Tweet thread by Lookonchain [archive]
Bitget accuses "professional arbitrage" group of profiting $20 million from VOXEL market manipulation
After trading — and prices — surged in Bitget's market for the thinly traded video game token VOXEL, the company has accused a "professional arbitrage" group of "improperly" profiting $20 million from manipulating the market. A Bitget executive stated on Twitter that they had issued legal demands to eight accounts they said were responsible for "instigating" the unusual trading activity.
Mantra token price suddenly collapses by 90%
Mantra's $OM token price suddenly crashed by around 90%, with the project's supposed "market cap" shrinking by around $5 billion in the span of hours. Mantra is a layer-1 blockchain project aiming to support real-world asset trading.
Some have accused Mantra of rug-pulling or accused Mantra investors like Laser Digital of mass sell-offs. However, Mantra claims that the flash crash was due to "reckless forced closures initiated by centralized exchanges on OM account holders" — a claim that has been questioned by those observing the rapidity of the crash.
Polymarket suffers governance attack as whale manipulates Ukraine bet resolution; refuses refunds
Bets on the Polymarket platform where the outcome is not clear are resolved using an oracle system called UMA, or Universal Market Access. Holders of the UMA token participate in a vote to determine the outcome of challenged market resolutions.
Recently, $7 million was spent in a Polymarket market over whether Ukraine would agree to Trump's proposed mineral deal. Though no mutual agreement was reached, the market resolved to "yes". When it was challenged, a large holder of the UMA token cast a substantial number of yes votes to sway the outcome of the resolution, leaving the outcome in place.
Although Polymarket acknowledged that "This market resolved against the expectations of our users and our clarification" (referring to a Polymarket clarification that the resolution was too early as no mutual agreement was reached), they also refused to issue any refunds, writing that "this wasn't a market failure". "This is an unprecedented situation, and we have been in war rooms all day internally and with the UMA team to make sure this won't happen again. This is not a part of the future we want to build," the team member added.
Binance acknowledges employee insider trading
Binance announced on Twitter that they had fired an employee after discovering that they had engaged in insider trading. The employee took a large position in a token that he knew would be engaging in a "token generation event", then quickly sold off the tokens after the project announced the event. According to Binance, this allowed him to "realize significant profits".
Binance announced that they had fired the employee, as "This behavior constitutes front-running based on non-public information obtained from his previous role and is a clear breach of company policy." The company became aware of the insider trading after they were alerted by outside parties who submitted tips to the company.
Argentinian president Javier Milei promotes memecoin that then crashes 95% in apparent $100 million+ rug pull
A tweet from Argentina's president Javier Milei promoted a memecoin called Libra, which he described as a "private project [that] will [be] dedicated to encouraging the growth of the Argentine economy by funding small Argentine businesses and startups". The token quickly soared in price as traders poured in.
However, within hours of the launch, insiders began selling off their holdings of the token. The token had been highly concentrated among insiders, with around 82% of the token held in a small cluster of apparently insider addresses. Those insiders cashed out around $107 million, crashing the token price by around 95%.
After the crash, Milei deleted his tweet promoting the project. He later claimed he was "not aware of the details of the project and after having become aware of it I decided not to continue spreading the word (that is why I deleted the tweet)."
AlleyCat project developer takes presale money to fund gambling habit
The creator of the AlleyCat Solana-based cryptocurrency project has reportedly taken about 600 SOL (~$130,000) raised during the project's presale and transferred it to gambling platforms including Sportsbet.io and Bitcasino. Although the project raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in presale funds, stating it was needed for token liquidity on launch, only 18 SOL (~$11,000) was ever used for liquidity.
Altogether, around $827,000 has passed through the AlleyCat creator's Sportsbet.io account in seven months. Crypto scam-spotting account Rug Pull Finder has alleged that the AlleyCat creator is also behind other rugpulls.
The AlleyCat cryptocurrency project is based on the 1983 Atari game of the same name, though the crypto project does not appear to have any affiliation with (or approval from) the game's creators.
- "AlleyCat - The Gambling Deployer!", Rug Pull Finder
Dogwifhat memecoin lies about deal to put the meme on the Las Vegas Sphere after raising $700,000 to pay for it
In late January, the creator of the "dogwifhat" memecoin announced "Officially confirmed. Viva hat vegas." in a tweet accompanied by a photo overlaying the dog meme with the Las Vegas Sphere. Project organizers had raised around $700,000 in March 2024 to fund the project, hoping that the attention-grabbing stunt would spike the memecoin price. The announcement alone had somewhat of a similar effect, causing the $WIF price to spike by more than 30% shortly after.
However, crypto media firm Decrypt reached out to a spokesperson for the Las Vegas Sphere and discovered that no such deal had been reached.
Dogwifhat creators have since backtracked, replacing the tweet with a version omitting the "officially confirmed" portion, but still claiming that they "have been in ongoing negotiations with various parties to collaborate on the Sphere ad placement". They promised to return the funds "if, by any chance, the plan is not executed".
DogWifTools rugpuller tool rug pulls the rugpullers
A suite of software tools called DogWifTools was popular among memecoin creators looking to rug pull unsuspecting traders. By helping token creators mask supply control and fake trading activity, the tool was used to convince outside traders that a token had potential — at least, up until the token creator pulled the rug out from under them.
However, poor security by the software developers allowed attackers to ship a remote access trojan (RAT) along with the DogWifTools release. Once the package was downloaded, the trojan began scanning infected devices for crypto private keys, login information, and other sensitive data. Attackers even used scans of identification documents taken from their targets' computers to create Binance accounts.
Ultimately, around $10 million was stolen from would-be scammers. Along with the virus, the people who compromised DogWifTools left an angry note on infected machines: "Solana is a fucking joke and a scam from the beginning, it was designed for criminals by criminals! As a result, we have confiscated all your crypto, because you deserved it! You people who use automated tools to run these scam tokens are fucking disgusting to us. It's about time you got fucked over for once. Solana is nothing more than a shitty platform that enables scammers and rug pullers to steal from innocent users."
They also launched an onion website containing a message: "We specifically targeted scammers in the crypto market who were using tools to gain an unfair advantage over innocent, day-to-day traders. ... We believe it was morally correct to confiscate money that was not rightfully theirs." They added that they would soon be publishing the user data they stole on the scammers.
- "Poetic Justice", Rekt [archive]