2025 turned out to be a year of progress for crypto investors who had burned their money in the previous cycle. With all the positive things happening for the digital assets market last year, scams, hacks, and rug pulls also grabbed eyeballs.
A report suggests that the crypto industry lost $3.4 billion to theft for the year. The February mega Bybit hack alone accounted for $1.5 billion. North Korean hackers managed to steal $2.02 billion in crypto in 2025. This has been a 51% year-over-year increase for them. Amid all this, rug pull events became less frequent, but looted many investors.
2025’s rug pulls were marked by social influence, insider access, and rapid liquidity drains. These events covered politically linked meme coins to DeFi protocols that broke trust built over months or even years.
Collapse of Mantra
The fall of Mantra Network shocked the market in April. Its OM token collapsed by more than 90% in under an hour. It plunged from nearly $6 to below $0.40, which led to the erosion of billions overnight. However, analysts flagged unusual activity shortly before the crash, but they were unable to avoid it. Large and sudden position closure became one of the main reasons behind the fall as it pushed liquidity under pressure.
John Patrick Mullin, Mantra co-founder, has rejected the allegations around insider rug pull. He argued that the collapse was triggered by exchange-side liquidations. These trades were reportedly carried out without margin calls or notice. Some called it the result of reckless liquidations.
The collapse of Mantra’s price. Source: CoinMarketCap.At the end of the event, approx. $6 billion was wiped out. This made Mantra one of the largest alleged rug pull collapses in crypto history. OM is trading at an average price of $0.08 at the press time. It’s down by 99% from its all-time high of $9.04.
Pi Network pulling high hopes down
On one side, Mantra showed investors a sudden collapse, then Pi Network displayed the risks of delayed hopes on the other.
Pi came into the market with a buzz around the first mobile mining crypto. It managed to grab millions of users over time. Meanwhile, its much-awaited mainnet launch in early 2025 turned into a controversial affair. Blockchain investigators alleged that 12 million PI tokens were dumped within hours. This slashed the token’s price by more than 50%, sending investors under pressure.
Pi Core Team wallets were reportedly flagged as potential sources of the outflows. Such allegations raised questions about insider behavior. However, Pi’s backers denied it. More than $8 billion in notional value was drained by the end of the incident.
Pi price went on to nose-dive straight from $2.7 (27 Feb, 2025) to hit below $1.3 (3 March 2025). It then went on to break below $1 later. The token is trading at an average price of $0.20 at the press time. It is still holding a market cap of $1.7 billion.
MetaYield Farm made DeFi suffer
February 2025 witnessed another massive free fall of hopes. MetaYield Farm, a DeFi protocol, disappeared entirely. They drained approx. $290 million from more than 14,000 users. On-chain data reportedly flagged funds being bridged from Hyperliquid to Ethereum. Almost 752 ETH were routed out through Tornado Cash. This landed MetaYield at the top of the pure DeFi rug pull of the year.
The team deleted all online presence while investors tried to find out answers. The whole project ran on aggressive social media marketing. Unverified smart contracts were used to attract liquidity before the running away act.
Rise of political meme coins
The year 2025 saw a new fascination with politically branded tokens. LIBRA turned out to be one of the most controversial tokens in the category.
Argentine President Javier Milei took to social media to promote the $LIBRA token based on Solana. His tweets are sent the token’s market cap to hit above $4.5 billion. Insiders were quick they pull out between $107 million and $250 million within hours. Over 114,000 investor wallets lost money in the act.
Milei later said he had no connection to the project. He also deleted the post after the matter made the global headlines. However, the damage was already done. The episode became known locally as “Cryptogate.”
In the US, the Trump family-linked tokens followed a similar arc. Cryptos with names like $TRUMP, $MELANIA, and $BARRON came into the market. They also recorded a drop of around 90% to 99% from their peaks.
A federal class-action lawsuit alleged that insiders treated the projects as well as planned pump-and-dump schemes. TRUMP is trading at an average price of $5.64 at the press time. It had posted an ATH of over $75 in Jan 2025. Similarly, MELANIA is trading down by 99% from its ATH of $13.73.
Investors also got duped into a fake Eric Trump token, too. The fake project went on to hit $160 million market cap before crashing to near zero.
With rug pulls, the crypto investors also got a taste of some huge hacks. February saw the Bybit hack. Users lost around $1.5 billion in stolen Ethereum. This turned out to be the largest single crypto theft ever recorded.
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Source: https://www.cryptopolitan.com/cryptos-year-rug-pulls-most-expensive/
