What a rug pull is and how to spot one
The most common scam in the meme coin world, explained with a real case
What it is, in plain terms
"Rug pull" describes the moment when whoever created or controls a token suddenly withdraws value from the project, leaving buyers holding tokens worth almost nothing.
It's not a single scheme: it can happen in technically very different ways, and it's exactly this variety that makes it hard to catch with a single automated check.
The two most common variants
The first is direct liquidity withdrawal: if the developer hasn't locked the liquidity pool, they can simply pull it out in one click, leaving token holders with no one to trade with (that's why there's a dedicated indicator: read the locked liquidity guide).
The second, more subtle one, is coordinated selling by a group of wallets that holds the majority of supply while appearing to be 'different wallets'. This is exactly the pattern behind the LIBRA case (January 2025): several wallets held suspiciously identical token amounts — a statistical signal of planned allocation, not natural market buying. When the price rose thanks to a public endorsement, those wallets sold in bulk, crashing the value by 94% in a few hours.
How CriptoCheck catches it
The "Identical amounts among holders" indicator looks for exactly this pattern: different wallets holding token amounts identical down to the last decimal — a statistically improbable event for natural buying, but typical of a distribution planned in advance.
It's the check that, tested against real LIBRA data, actually flagged the risk correctly — unlike shallower indicators such as just the percentage held by the single largest wallet.
What it does NOT guarantee, to be honest
Not every rug pull leaves this signature. There are also schemes where wallets are bulk-funded from a single external source before even buying the token (a different pattern that our other experimental indicators can't yet detect reliably).
That's why all-green indicators don't equal '100% safe' — they reduce one specific, documented risk, not eliminate risk entirely.
Now that you know what it means, try CriptoCheck on a real token.
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