Two BSC Token Rugs Net $2.79 Million in a Single Week

Two unrelated token projects on BNB Smart Chain were emptied by their own deployers this week, with combined losses reaching roughly $2.79 million, even as attention across the crypto industry stayed fixed on Sam Bankman-Fried's ongoing trial. The incidents are a reminder that insider-driven rug pulls have continued at a steady pace on BSC — an ongoing pattern largely independent of broader market conditions.

The first project, Lucky Star Currency, saw its deployer withdraw funds from two of its own contracts in the early hours of Monday (UTC), netting $1.11 million. The deployer address invoked a privileged withdrawToken() function, first pulling 1.65 million LSC tokens from the project's AwardCentre contract in this transaction, then a further 1.45 million LSC from the NFTMerge contract in a second transaction. The roughly 3 million LSC tokens were then swapped for $1.1 million in BSC-USD and moved to a holding address, where they have remained.

Lucky Star Currency launched in July as a Chinese astrology-themed NFT project promoted through the Twitter handle AstrAstrol75591, though the two contracts used in the withdrawal had been published only a little over two weeks earlier. After the drain, a message posted in the project's Telegram group, written in English, framed the event as a hack rather than an insider withdrawal and floated relaunching with new contracts.

The second incident involved the FSL token, whose unverified contract was less than 24 hours old at the time it was drained on Tuesday afternoon (UTC). During the contract creation transaction, the deployer minted 100 million FSL tokens to itself. Of those, 97 million were sent to a second address, which then sold them for $1.68 million in BSC-USD, wiping out the token's liquidity. The proceeds were converted into 7,952.2 BNB and deposited into Tornado Cash.

Together, the two projects accounted for $2.79 million in losses within a single week. Credit for tracking the incidents goes to Certik and Beosin. Even while this article was being written, two further BSC projects were reported rugged: Islamic Coin, for $150,000, and Marble X, for $160,000.

The pattern is not new. Since its inception, BSC has served as a low-friction environment for shitcoin launches and rug pulls, built on a semi-centralized DeFi-lite model that attracts users with little inclination to research projects before buying in. The chain's continued exposure to this kind of activity comes as Binance faces mounting regulatory pressure and ongoing investigations on other fronts.