Crypto glossary
Exit scam
An exit scam is a fraud in which the operators of a platform, market or project build up user trust and deposits, then disappear with the funds.
The term comes from darknet markets, where several administrators shut down their sites overnight and kept the escrowed coins of buyers and sellers. In crypto it now covers any operation that runs normally for months, collecting deposits or investment, and then stops: a centralized exchange whose founders vanish, a yield platform that closes its website or a token team that abandons the project after selling its allocation.
Exit scams are attractive to bad actors because the value accumulates in their custody and blockchain transfers are final. The Turkish exchange Thodex, whose founder left the country in 2021 as withdrawals stopped, is one of the best-known cases, and he was later convicted in Turkey.
An exit scam differs from a rug pull mainly in scale and form: a rug pull usually refers to pulling liquidity or dumping tokens on a DEX, while an exit scam can involve any custodial service. Not every shutdown is an exit scam; legitimate businesses also close, but they announce it and return funds.
Example
A small exchange offering unusually high staking rates disables withdrawals for maintenance, deletes its social accounts two days later, and its hot wallets are emptied to new addresses.
Related terms
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