BingChatGPT ‘pump & dump’ tokens appear in dozens: Peckshield
Blockchain security firm Peckshield has sounded the alarm after finding dozens of tokens purporting to be related to artificial intelligence (AI) powered chatbot ChatGPT.
In a post on February 20, the firm revealed that at least three “BingChatGPT” tokens appear to be part of honeypot schemes – a smart contract that tricks a user into sending Ethereum (ETH), which the attacker then captures and retrieves.
According to Peckshield, at least two of the identified tokens have already lost nearly 100% of their value, while a third has a 65% loss – in what is often referred to as a “pump and dump” scheme or “rug pull”. “
A pump-and-dump scheme usually involves the creators orchestrating a campaign of misleading statements and hype to persuade investors to buy tokens, then secretly selling their stake in the scheme when prices rise.
At least one of the bad actors behind the tokens, “Deployer 0xb583,” is responsible for creating “dozens of tokens with a pump & dump scheme,” Peckshield said.
While PeckShield did not explain why the bad actors are using the name BingChatGPT for their tokens, the scammers may be trying to take advantage of the February 7 announcement that OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology is being integrated into Bing and Microsoft’s Edge browser.
The name of the token may be an attempt to trick victims into thinking they are somehow related to Microsoft and take advantage of the hype around AI chatbots.
Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis recently noted in a February 16 report that nearly 10,000 new tokens launched in 2022 had all the on-chain characteristics of being pump-and-dump schemes.
According to the Blockchain analytics firm, 1.1 million tokens were launched last year, but only 40,521 had an “impact on the crypto ecosystem”, with at least ten exchanges over four consecutive days of trading in the week following launch.
“Of the 40,521 tokens launched in 2022 that gained sufficient traction to be worth analyzing, 9,902, or 24%, saw a price decline in the first week indicating possible pump and dump activity,” the firm said.
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While a price drop in itself is not indicative of wrongdoing by token creators, the firm noted that it investigated 25 in particular and found “they were almost certainly designed for a pump and dump” and had malicious honeypot code that prevents new buyers from to sell the token.
