Is BALD Token on Base a Rug Pull or the Newest Trend? What You Need to Know

The cryptocurrency field has given us plenty of opportunity to baffle at what traders are capable of, and the past couple of days were no different.

From dog-themed meme coins (Dogecoin, Shiba Inu) to PEPE coin and a ton of others, this time, someone created a token called BALD on the recently-launched BASE chain – the one that’s run by Coinbase.

What is BALD Coin?

BALD is a recently-created cryptocurrency on Base.

For those unaware, Base is an Ethereum Layer-2 network based on Optimism, and it was launched by Coinbase on February 23rd. Back then, the company said in a statement:

… we see Base as a “bridge” for users into the crypto economy. It’s an easy-to-use default onchain experience with access to products on other chains.

That said, someone decided to take the opportunity and create a new meme coin on the fresh network. The token is called BALD, and already the entire cryptocurrency community on Twitter (now: X) is talking about it.

That’s no surprise. Launched only a few days ago, BALD already painted a tremendous increase, but there’s more to the story.

Conspiracies Run Wild

Part of the allure of BALD is perhaps the fact that the cryptocurrency is shrouded in mystery, with a whole number of people speculating on its origins.

Some even go so far as to suggest that it’s a Coinbase insider. Supposedly, the team (or person) behind BALD holds ties with a significant supply of cbETH. This is a wrapped version of ETH that’s usable on Base chain. One user pointed out that the creator of BALD had 49% of the total supply.

pretty sure the BALD deployer is affiliated with coinbase somehow considering he had 49% of the cbETH supply pic.twitter.com/QivTYzkMui

— Kuro (@KuroXLB) July 30, 2023

In any case, though, there are already early investors surfacing with stories of wild gains, which is to be expected, given that the cryptocurrency’s market cap increased from around $100,000 to over $8 million in less than a couple of days.

One issue that some have pointed out is the absence of a working bridge to get the money out of Base. This would essentially mean that the funds that were put into the network can’t be bridged out.

Rug Pull or the Newest Trend?

As we mentioned, the token launched a little more than a day ago and already plunged by some 90% in the past hours.

This seems to be related to news that the developer has pulled the liquidity. However, network data also shows that the developer has been adding liquidity in smaller batches of ETH.

Meanwhile, the official Twitter account of the project posted that no tokens have been sold on their behalf:

I didn’t sell a single token at any point since deployment. Just added/removed 2 sided liquidity and bought

— Bald (@BaldBaseBald) July 31, 2023