Bitcoin Pizza Day Goes Stale as Pizza-Styled Memecoin Issuers Pull the Rug
TL;DR Laszlo Hanyecz's purchase of two pizzas with Bitcoin in 2010 has become a historic event for cryptocurrency, which is now celebrated annually as Bitcoin Pizza Day on May 22nd. Unfortunately, scammers have taken advantage of the hype surrounding this holiday and created several fake pizza-related memecoins in the days leading up to the event. These tokens raked in over $300,000 before they were found to be scams.
Floridian programmer and an early Bitcoin miner named Laszlo Hanyecz’s purchase of two pizzas with Bitcoin in 2010 has been etched into history, marking a pivotal moment for cryptocurrency.
Since then, Bitcoin Pizza Day is celebrated every year on May 22nd. However, scammers are lurking even on that day.
In light of this historic event, several malicious entities have sprung up in action to dupe unsuspecting investors. Considering the current risk appetite of investors for memecoins, fraudsters have resorted to creating obscure pizza-related memecoins.
As per Dextools’ data, at least 14 such tokens were issued just a few days before the event, most of which turned out to be scams.
BTCPizza, BPizza, PizzaDay, and EthPizza were some of the tokens that were found to have been created three days before Bitcoin Pizza Day and reportedly accumulated over $300,000 in market cap.
The BPizza operator abruptly changed its sell tax to 100% rendering it unfeasible for investors to sell it. The team behind EthPizza, on the other hand, turned off transfers and sales for the token shortly after raking in a market cap of $38,000.
Scammers have continued to exploit the memecoin hysteria, with PEPE being the latest sensation that has piqued the interest of many degens.
Last week, blockchain security platform PeckShield revealed identifying a series of rug pulls involving the creation of nearly 24 scam memecoins.