Rug pull
Etymology
From the idiom "to pull the rug out from under someone," meaning to remove support abruptly. It became crypto shorthand around 2020–2021 for developers who drain a token’s liquidity pool and disappear, but now describes any bait-and-switch withdrawal of promised support.
noun phrase · /RUHG-puul/
A scam in which a project’s creators suddenly abandon it and vanish with investors’ money.
What it names
A distinctly modern fraud pattern — build trust, then disappear overnight — with an image everyone instantly grasps.
Example
The token doubled in a week, then the founders did a rug pull and the price went to zero overnight.
Related idea
Distinct from a Ponzi scheme, which pays early investors with later ones over time; a rug pull is a sudden exit, not a sustained illusion.