A self-rug is a rug that was caused by you. This usually means that you did something stupid, resulting in the loss of assets.
Unlike the banks you used to do business with before crypto made them obsolete, you can’t call customer service or have a transaction reversed. What’s done is done and registered on-chain for everyone to enjoy in eternity.
Some notable self-rugging include:
- Sending tokens to the contract address instead of to the intended receiving address
- Sending tokens to the wrong address or to a wrong chain
- Sending the wrong token to the right contract
- Losing your secret key or recovery phrase
- FOMO into a rug by not DYOR
- Forgetting to reset your slippage after apeing into some shitcoins on a DEX.
- Mixing up wei’s and ETH
- Selling NFTs for 20 USDC instead of 20 ETH
- Adding some extra digits when changing gas fees, paying 100x more than needed
- Losing your hardware wallet in an unfortunate boating accident.
In many cases, the fact that crypto addresses are long and difficult to remember creates both security as well as risk.
Especially the clipboard function on computers can be an endless source of self-rugging as the address you pasted might be different from what you thought you last copied. Always double-check all receiving addresses.
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