BALD: Another crypto scam!

Scams, hacks, crackdowns, aggressive regularization… so many stories tainting the cryptosphere. When will these terrible nightmares end? No one has the answer yet. We might as well be extra careful to avoid being ripped off by ill-intentioned project promoters like the scammers behind BALD.

BALD reduced to nothing after an astronomical rise

Like other crypto companies worthy of the name, Coinbase also set about launching its own Layer 2 Ethereum blockchain network. But Base’s test was so inconclusive that its first users were disappointed.

This widespread discouragement is now history, as the developers of BALD, a memecoin launched on Sunday July 30, have not hesitated to use Base to their triumph.

Over the weekend someone created a memecoin called Bald on BASE (Coinbase’s ETH L2) that reached a $85mm mkt cap in 48 hours

Just got rug pulled and dropped 85% almost instantly pic.twitter.com/5cAs4aAbuZ

— Will Clemente (@WClementeIII) July 31, 2023

The “rug pull”, which reminds us of this strange Multichain story, has thus struck a new memecoin project inspired by Coinbase boss Brian Armstrong.

According to Cointelegraph, BALD posted a spectacular 289,000% rise in just 12 hours of trading. An unexpected success for a project that doesn’t even have an official website or objectives, let alone any utility or creator names mentioned anywhere.

CoinDesk has revealed, however, that this situation has prompted the developers of bald tokens (BALD) to withdraw millions of dollars in liquidity in this short ascension. BALD, which held 32 million ETH during the morning of July 31, saw its price plummet in bizarre fashion. On occasion, it lost its value of 0.09 a coin to trade at $0.01.

The same crypto media gave BALD a 4,000,000% rise, causing a massive influx of capital into the new crypto bridge.

BREAKING:$BALD removes over 7,000 ETH of liquidity.
Price crashing. pic.twitter.com/bQJL5YdLKC

— Whale (@WhaleChart) July 31, 2023

The rug pull thesis

A “rug pull” is the practice of grabbing investor funds simply by launching a crypto project (token, NFT, platform…).

What happened with BALD leads us to conclude that this coinbase staked ether (cbETH)-financed project falls into this category.

It all began late on Saturday. Influencer @cheatcoiner promoted memecoin, claiming to have recouped 2% of the offer. After this “call”, crypto traders began to show interest in the project in question. Unwary followers bought in at high prices. They simply believed that BALD would be a good deal launched by someone at Coinbase.

BALD soon hit the bull market. And you know the rest.

In all the excitement, the caller amassed over $1.4 million. Yet he had only invested $500 at the outset.

BALD’s developers did everything they could to attract investors. In particular, they regularly added ether to a liquidity pool exchanging BALD tokens for ETH.

As a result, the exchange pair holds around 32 million in cash and 100 million in volume, CoinDesk points out.

In the meantime, 4 other addresses, each having invested around $1,000, offered themselves 50 million BALD just before the memecoin was issued. As soon as the price of memecoin climbed, they sold large quantities to the point of making huge profits of around 554 ETH.

These 4 addresses spent 0.534 $ETH($1K) to buy 50M $BALD (50% of the total supply) within 4 mins of $BALD starting trading.

Then sold 37M $BALD for 554 $ETH($1.04M).

Earned $1M with $1K in 1 day! pic.twitter.com/gXIDRjbhic

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) July 30, 2023

SBF, BALD’s druid?

BALD wouldn’t have been such an intriguing success without a real magician behind it. Here’s a hypothetical name for the director of such a crypto scam.

just to catch you up

SBF the guy with the fake crypto exchange and responsible for one of the biggest frauds in history may have launched a $30m scam last weekend under a memecoin called BALD while on house arrest in his parents basement using the blockchain of a man who was… pic.twitter.com/VjnSJCxg0E

— RYAN SΞAN ADAMS – rsa.eth (@RyanSAdams) July 31, 2023

Crypto trader HskaTrades doesn’t rule out the possibility of “ammunition” being handed over to a Gary Gensler in the midst of his battle with Coinbase.

Others have spotted similarities between Sam Bankman-Fried’s sentence structures and BALD’s tweets. What’s more, the portfolio dates back to the first votes cast on Sushi Swap.

But other Twittos rejected these accusations. They pointed out that SBF can only use a “flip phone without an Internet connection” at the moment. So, no access to Twitter.

In any case, this story smells a little fishy. Sure, memecoins can make you rich in no time, as the case of Pepe and Floki clones reminds us. But the fall can also be brutal. Especially with crypto scammers at the helm.