‘Rug Pull’ Warnings Makes Coinbase Remove Crypto Links

Nasdaq-listed Coinbase has pages dedicated to investing in tokens, however, the pages in question were merely educational rather than offering them for trading on its app or wallet.

The pages, according to Sales, were generated automatically using data from the data website CoinMarketCap and included a disclaimer that the information was not financial advice and that the exchange was not liable for 'errors and delays.'

CoinMarketCap Denies Any Partnership With Coinbase

CoinMarketCap said it was unaware of the Coinbase pages, and its vice-president of growth and operations, Shaun Heng, stated that the two companies were not affiliated. It's unclear whether Coinbase checked the coins whose information pages were erased, according to Sales. Coinbase said in an email to Reuters on Thursday that it would 'develop a more robust disclaimer for the pages that are being auto-created.'

And not just this, Coinbase is also planning to 'build a process to take down any other pages which CoinMarketCap has flagged as potentially being scams,' they said, and added that 'assets which relate to known scams were not tradeable on the exchange'. 

While the popularity of cryptocurrency adoption has grown significantly, industry scams have continued to make headlines. According to Chainalysis, scams stole more than $7.7 billion from investors last year.

DeFi100, Mercenary, and Squid Are The Pages That Were Removed

Coinbase took down a website that offered DeFi100 and advised visitors to check CoinMarketCap to see where it could be purchased.

DeFi100's tokens have not seen any daily trade volumes since November 14, according to CoinMarketCap, which does not sell cryptocurrency. 

The website for DeFi100 is currently unavailable. Its most recent tweet was from May of last year. Requests for comment on DeFi100 and its warning were not returned by CoinMarketCap. In May, Twitter users claimed that DeFi100 had engaged in a 'rug pull,' in which investors deposit money in phoney projects before the coin's producers take the money. In one of its last tweets on May 23, DeFi100 refuted the charges. It stated it hoped to 'put the initiative back on its feet,' acknowledging that investors had lost money. 

Coinbase also removed a page promoting Mercenary, a coin that, like DeFi100, was not available on Coinbase's app or wallet. Mercenary was created in January and has already reached a peak of about $20. However, it plunged from just over $8 to a fraction of a cent in minutes on Jan. 26 and has not recovered since, according to CoinMarketCap data.

PeckShield, a blockchain security startup, advised customers about Mercenary after it was struck by a rug grab on Jan. 26.

It's unclear when Coinbase initially appeared on Mercenary, but according to archival webpages, CoinMarketCap originally appeared on Jan. 15. When asked if Mercenary had been removed from CoinMarketCap's system, the company did not react. 

Coinbase has also pulled down a page for a coin named after Squid Game, which fell to nearly zero in November, according to cyber security experts. It wasn't visible on the Coinbase app or wallet, either. Following the project's demise, the SQUID token's website and Medium account were promptly pulled offline and are now unavailable. The project's account was also suspended by Twitter, which said it had broken the network's regulations.

SQUID's developers announced their decision to abandon the coin on Telegram in November, claiming that 'someone is attempting to attack our project.'