What Is a Honeypot Token? How It Traps Buyers
A honeypot token is a crypto token whose contract lets anyone buy but stops most or all holders from selling. The buyer sees a price on a chart, yet every sell attempt fails or returns almost nothing. The deployer, or a few approved wallets, are the only ones able to cash out. What is a honeypot token? A honeypot is a scam built into the token's own code. On a normal token, buying and selling follow the same transfer rules. In a honeypot, the contract contains a hidden condition that treats sells differently from buys. The condition can be a blocklist, a sell tax set close to the maximum, a switch the owner can flip at any time, or a transfer check that only whitelisted addresses pass. The name comes from security research, where a honeypot is bait that lures an attacker. Here the roles are reversed: the token is the bait and the buyer is the target. Because the chart still shows trades, a honeypot can look active and even look like it is rising. Those trades are mostly buys from p...
