BALD Token Falls 90% Amid Rug Pull Allegations

The newly launched meme coin on Base fell sharply on Monday as the contract’s deployers removed liquidity.

BALD, a token launched on Coinbase’s Layer 2 network Base, lost 90% of its value after hitting a peak market capitalization of $85 million on July 31.

Blockchain users pointed out that the token’s creator had removed most of its liquidity from decentralized exchange (DEX) LeetSwap, where BALD was actively traded between Sunday and Monday.

1 hour ago, @BaldBaseBald removed most of the liquidity in @LeetSwap.

The largest txs is 20 minutes ago when he withdrew 7K $ETH and 142M $BALD ($13M)

He now holds 12K $ETH ($23M) pic.twitter.com/v9wJGpFxW0

— The Data Nerd (@OnchainDataNerd) July 31, 2023

$BALD deployer just pulled the last 370 ETH of its liquidity and hard rugged now

80m in mcap gone in under an hour

The Wild West of Crypto 🫡 pic.twitter.com/zCaHAagIxm

— notEezzy 🧸 (@notEezzy) July 31, 2023

“I didn’t sell a single token at any point since deployment. Just added/removed 2 sided liquidity and bought,” the pseudonymous developer behind the token said on Twitter.

One user pointed out that by adding two-sided liquidity when price goes up, the automated market maker is selling tokens in exchange for ETH in the pool, which is, in effect, the same thing as selling tokens. The BALD contract deployer noted that this assertion was “correct.”

Analysis by crypto trader “@thiccythot_” estimated that the BALD deployer made a profit of around $5.2 million, after removing nearly $20 million worth of liquidity.

this seems like clearly malicious behavior given the timing of the bids and LP removes

how much did the deployer make?

the deployer added 6,870ETH, spent 1,360ETH buying at an average price of 0.0004, and withdrew 10,704 ETH

Net profit: 2,789 ETH or $5.2 million dollars

6/ pic.twitter.com/ocNSsmsTMt

— thiccy (@thiccythot_) July 31, 2023

Coinbase launched the Base mainnet for developers on July 14, inviting early builders to deploy their projects but hold off on revealing user-facing applications until the network opens to public in early August, which is also when a publicly available user interface to bridge ETH to the network will likely be made available.

Even so, market participants have bridged ETH to Base to buy up tokens on the network, which has quickly become a hub for trading obscure meme coins. 

According to on-chain insights platform Scopescan, a single wallet address, known to be a “series rug-puller” on chains like Binance Smart Chain and Arbitrum, has deployed 29 meme coins to base and rugged every single one of them.