Coinbase Global has removed ‘how to buy’ guidelines for at least three cryptocurrency tokens that were the object of “rug pull” warnings that investors could lose their money. The company said on Thursday that it is planning to enhance security measures.
Jaclyn Sales, who is a spokesperson for Coinbase stated that the hyperlinks are removed exchange’s website following their being reported to the company in the last week, according to Reuters. Additionally, there will be an upgrade to the security of its websites that are automatically created she added.
Nasdaq-listed Coinbase offers pages with information regarding investing in tokens as well as the pages were informative rather than offering them to trade via its app or wallet.
Sales claimed that the pages, with a disclaimer saying the information provided was not investment advice, and that it was neither responsible nor responsible in the event of “errors and delays”, were compiled automatically using information provided by the websites that collect data CoinMarketCap.
CoinMarketCap stated that it was not aware of Coinbase pages, and its vice president of operations and growth Shaun Heng said there was no collaboration with Coinbase.
Sales stated that it was not certain if Coinbase conducted checks on the currencies whose pages it had removed. Coinbase will “build a more robust disclaimer for the pages which are being auto-created,” the exchange informed Reuters via email on Thursday.
Coinbase will additionally “build a process to take down any other pages which CoinMarketCap has flagged as potentially being scams,” it added, adding it was “assets which relate to known scams were not tradeable on the exchange”.
‘RUG PULLS’
A page that was deleted by Coinbase was a page that featured DeFi100 and advised users to look up CoinMarketCap to see the best places to purchase it.
However, the DeFi100 page https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/defi100/historical-data on CoinMarketCap warns: “We have received multiple reports that this project has exited as a scam. Please exercise caution.”
CoinMarketCap is a website that does not offer cryptocurrencies for sale on its website, states DeFi100’s tokens do not have any trading volume on a daily basis since November. 14.
DeFi100’s website https://defi100.org and Medium blog page https://wrapp3d.medium.com are offline. The last tweet it made was in May last year.
CoinMarketCap has not responded to inquiries for comments regarding DeFi100 or its cautionary statement.
Twitter users reported on May 1 that DeFi100 had carried out the “rug pull”, where investors put money into fake projects prior to a coin’s creators steal the money.
DeFi100 denied the allegations in one of its last tweets, on May 23. In acknowledging that investors had suffered losses, the company stated it was hoping to “bring the project back on its feet”.
1/2 It’s been said that DEFI100 scammed for $32 million. The highest market cap project ever had was less than $2 million and project never held any investors fund!
Rumours of scamming for 32 mil are false and baseless.— DEFI100 (@DEFI100) May 23, 2021
It has not responded on Reuters requests for comments.
‘MERCENARY’
Coinbase also pulled down an account that offered a cryptocurrency known as Mercenary that, just like DeFi100 is not available in Coinbase’s wallet or app.
Mercenary was launched in January, reaching a peak of nearly $20. However, on January. 26 it dropped within moments from just under $8 to just a fraction of one cent and has not recovered since then, CoinMarketCap data shows.
Blockchain security firm PeckShield tweeted on Jan. 26 that Mercenary had been hit by a rug pull and warned buyers off it.
#RugPull PeckShield has detected that $MGOLD #mercenarygold #BSC (https://t.co/vTMaRBGFHS)
rugged, the deployer drained more than $760k! Stay *AWAY* from it! pic.twitter.com/EQVreF1jfm— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) January 26, 2022
Reuters was unable to contact Mercenary and their website and Twitter page are also offline.
It’s not clear what time Coinbase created its website on Mercenary the website, which archives display CoinMarketCap first appearing in January. 15. CoinMarketCap has not responded to a question about whether or not it had deleted Mercenary off its servers.
Coinbase has also removed the page for the token that is named after Squid Game which crashed to the point of being almost null in November, according to cyber security experts who called a rug pulling. The token was also not accessible in Coinbase’s wallet or app.
The Medium account and the website that is behind the SQUID token was quickly removed from the internet when the project fell apart and are still down. Twitter also banned the account of the SQUID project, claiming that it had violated Twitter’s rules.
The team behind SQUID have announced in Telegram on November 1st that they had decided to stop using the token, stating that “someone is trying to hack our project”.
