FOMO in BALD Memecoin on Coinbase’s Layer-2 Base Ends in Rug Pull

Despite being created less than 24 hours ago, liquidity pouring into the BALD memecoin on Coinbase's Layer-2 Base has surpassed $36 million.

FOMO in BALD Memecoin on Coinbase’s Layer-2 Base Ends in Rug Pull

Update on the evening of 31/07/2023:

On the evening of 31/07, the person behind the BALD memecoin on Layer-2 Base unexpectedly withdrew liquidity from the BALD/WETH pool, causing the token's price to plummet by over 80%. Essentially, this action can be seen as a rug pull.

However, some investors noticed that the person behind BALD gradually re-added liquidity to the pool, while still holding 12,000 ETH in a separate wallet. Since Layer-2 Base does not yet have its own cross-chain bridge back to Ethereum, this amount of money is challenging to move.

The BALD Twitter account even posted a tweet reminiscent of Do Kwon's famous statement before the LUNA-UST collapse.

Original Article:

On Sunday, 30/07, the crypto community on Twitter focused its attention on BALD, a new memecoin created the previous day on Coinbase's Layer-2 Base.

BALD, meaning "bald," is a term often used by the crypto community on Twitter to poke fun at Brian Armstrong, the well-known CEO of Coinbase.

Despite being newly created and having its trading pool on the LeetSwap DEX on Base, the BALD/WETH pair had already increased more than 30,000 times at the time of writing. It was the fifth-highest liquidity pool on DEX Screener with $36.7 million, and its estimated diluted market cap was an impressive $70.3 million.

The FOMO intensified as prominent Twitter accounts in the crypto community began mentioning BALD, driving more attention to it.

"BALD is the fifth-highest liquidity token across all chains on DEX Screener?"

"What an exciting weekend to watch and trade BALD, a new memecoin on Base. It's a memecoin with a funny name and people are FOMOing into it, pushing the FDV to $100 million. Shitcoin season is definitely stronger than ever!"

"The LayerZero team can't believe their eyes as people send hundreds of thousands of dollars in ETH into a one-way bridge (available in the mainnet contract) to FOMO into Base."

However, as a newly launched memecoin, investing in it carries significant risks, especially since Base still lacks an official cross-chain bridge solution from Ethereum. The BALD Twitter account also warned the community to be cautious when transferring money and emphasized that the current bridge is Base's mainnet bridge, which only supports one-way transfers and cannot yet withdraw funds.

"Be careful when transferring money, the current bridge is the mainnet bridge of Base, only supporting one-way transfers."

As previously reported by Coin68, Base is a Layer-2 solution launched by Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, introduced in February 2023 using the OP Stack toolkit from Optimism. In mid-July, Base announced the deployment of its mainnet, opening up to users and developers worldwide.

Base has repeatedly stated that the project has no plans to issue a token. However, with the Layer-2 trend still extremely popular, crypto investors continue to transfer funds to new solutions like zkSync Era, Starknet, or LayerZero to experience products and hope for future airdrops.