Arctic Pablo, the crypto project themed around an Antarctic explorer and marketed as a gamified meme coin journey, launched its APC coin on PancakeSwap on September 16, 2025. At around 12:00 PM UTC, the team added 23,201,250 APC tokens and 200 WBNB to the liquidity pool, setting an initial price of about $0.00796 per coin.
Just over an hour into trading, heavy sell-offs began across several wallets. The APC coin plunged to $0.0000017, a 99.97% drop from its launch price. At the time of writing, $APC trades around $0.00001, marking a 99.8% decline from its listing price. Meanwhile, many investors reported being unable to claim their presale tokens, intensifying the post-launch chaos. The locked claim system, sudden mass selling, and lack of clear communication triggered a wave of scam accusations and rug-pull claims across social media.
Coinstore listing announcement now under scrutiny
On August 22, Coinstore’s official X account posted that the APC coin was “coming soon,” and the Arctic Pablo team later promoted this as confirmation of a September 24 listing. Since then, the crypto exchange has not issued further details, and following the token’s collapse on PancakeSwap, uncertainty remains over whether the listing will go ahead.
Arctic Pablo’s website and press releases pushed the Coinstore listing date heavily during the final presale stages, which offered up to 400% bonus codes, raising questions about whether the announcement was used only to drive last-minute sales.
Arctic Pablo project background and links to other failed meme tokens
Arctic Pablo was presented as a meme coin with an adventure-themed story, centered around a cartoon character on a fictional journey. Its website promised games, contests, a DAO, staking, and future NFT integrations. The project conducted a 40-stage presale over several months, featuring heavily incentivized bonus rounds and referral rewards. The presale raised approximately $4 million, according to the team’s statements.
Importantly, the team behind Arctic Pablo is anonymous, with no public founders or developers. This was not hidden; the project explicitly stated the team remained anonymous for “privacy”. However, a Reddit user has claimed to link Arctic Pablo to two earlier meme coins, MoonBag and BTFD, both of which experienced major price crashes after launch. The user presented screenshots showing shared branding, website structure, and even social media mix-ups, suggesting the same group may have been behind all three. One commenter noted that users were banned from official chats when they raised these connections, increasing suspicion.
Arctic Pablo’s response to rug pull accusations
In response to the backlash and the sharp price collapse, the Arctic Pablo team issued an official statement in their Telegram group. They denied any wrongdoing and attributed the price drop to “market dynamics” and “selling pressure”. They also stated that presale participants were successfully able to claim their tokens and that liquidity had been appropriately added.
“We’ve delivered on our commitments, and APC’s journey is only just beginning”, the team wrote. They emphasized that all transactions are traceable on-chain and insisted that the team did not orchestrate the sharp selloff; instead, it was the result of public trading.
Despite the explanation, the community response has remained overwhelmingly skeptical. Many users continue to report being unable to claim tokens, while others point to the shallow liquidity and immediate heavy selling as signs that the project may have been designed for a quick rug pull.
