Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below. Cryptocurrency investors have accused proposed Pokémon cards perpetual exchange Trove Markets of a rug pull after its token crashed over 95% within minutes of its launch on Jan. 19. The token, which launched at a market cap of nearly $19 million, was most recently at $153,000, an over 99% decline. "Textbook style rug executed by @TroveMarket," one user said on X. "Delayed ICO + TGE multiple times. Started token trading before distribution, allowing insiders/team wallets to frontrun sell before the market. Crashed the price to a 200k MC in 10 minutes." "$TROVE is officially the first rug of 2026," another said.
• The AI Marketing Platform Backed by Insiders from Google, Meta, and Amazon — Invest at $0.85/Share Others have also taken to the social media platform to lament their losses. "I put $10k into trove, they gave me tokens worth $3k at 20 mil FDV and just kept the remaining $7k??????" one claimed. "Just checked, my tokens are now worth $285." "It’s time for a class-action lawsuit against @TroveMarkets," another said. "My $20,000 investment with 9+ mil committed should have resulted in $14k USDC back and $6k in $TROVE. Due to the token GIGA nuking, they gave me in total $600 back." The token crash marks the culmination of a launch that was already fraught with confusion and controversy. The Trove Markets team, which promised to do for collectibles what exchanges did for Bitcoin, first stirred confusion with a short-lived decision to extend its initial coin offering. The team on Jan. 11 said it was extending the ICO for five more days "to ensure a fair, high-quality distribution to real users and long-term community members." The announcement raised eyebrows, since the ICO was already at its scheduled end and oversubscribed, having raised over $11.5 million. Only minutes later, Trove Markets reversed the extension. "We messed up by announcing an extension, and we're correcting it," Trove Markets said, but not before causing chaos in prediction markets. Following the initial announcement on Jan. 11, many rushed to adjust positions on a prediction market on the amount of capital the ICO would attract. The rapid switch left many of these traders holding the bag.