aura, a Solana-based memecoin, surged from $1 million to $50 million in market cap within 4 hours today, but a crypto scam tracker has flagged it as a potential rug pull.
According to CoinGecko data, aura (AURA) surged from $0.001 to a high of $0.005 on June 11, marking a 400% gain in a few hours. Its trading volume skyrocketed by over 115,000% from the previous day.
Interestingly, there was no official update or announcement from the project that could explain such a steep rally. As of press time, AURA was still up 4,130% over the past 24 hours, trading at around $0.042 with a market cap of $41.6 million.
Some traders believe the pump may have been triggered by a whale connected to SPX, a popular Solana culture coin. The SPX whale reportedly scooped up $500,000 worth of AURA shortly before the rally, which may have caught the attention of other investors and helped fuel the frenzy.
A few early investors have already cashed out. According to Lookonchain, one whale sold 2.87 million AURA tokens for a $104,000 profit, a 433% return on a $24,000 investment made about five months ago.
But while the gains look impressive, red flags are starting to surface. David, a known crypto scam analyst on X, warned that the rally might be part of an organized rug pull. In a June 11 post, he described AURA as a cleverly articulated scam run by insiders.
David pointed out that AURA has been around since May 30, 2024, but has shown no signs of development or added utility since launch.
He also noted that this isn’t the first time the token has pumped. AURA previously reached an all-time high market cap of $70 million before crashing to just $500,000 within two months, likely due to the founder pulling liquidity.
On-chain data raises further suspicion. David highlighted that AURA’s token supply is tightly controlled, with top wallets holding large bundles of tokens. Most of these tokens weren’t bought on the open market but were transferred or split from other wallets, indicating possible insider coordination.
Further, he flagged that many of these top holders are new and not long-term supporters, which makes the whole price action seem more like a setup than a genuine rally.
“It’s not a utility token, so we can’t say insiders would know something – kind of partnership or anything like that,” he added.
With no clear catalyst and rising concerns over manipulation, traders should proceed with caution.
AURA was still trading 42.5% below its all-time high at press time, but its highly concentrated holder base leaves the token vulnerable to sharp downturns if major wallets choose to offload.