Honeypot tokens: when you can buy but can't sell

A trap coded into the token itself. Here's how it works, and how to check before you buy.

A honeypot is a token designed so that you can buy it but not sell it. The price chart looks great — it only ever goes up, because the code silently blocks everyone except the creator from selling. You see your balance grow on paper, you feel clever for getting in early, and then when you try to take profit, the transaction just... fails. By the time you understand why, the creator has sold their own bag into all the money that flowed in.

How the trap is usually built:

• A sell-blocking rule in the contract. The code checks who's selling and rejects the transaction unless it's a whitelisted (usually the creator's) wallet.
• A 100%-on-sell "tax." Technically you can sell, but the fee on selling is set to take everything, so you receive nothing.
• A pause switch. Trading works until the creator flips a switch that freezes all sells at the moment of their choosing.

How to check before you buy: free honeypot-checker tools (they simulate a buy and a sell on the contract and tell you if the sell fails) catch a large share of these. They're not perfect, and a "clean" result isn't a guarantee — but a "you can't sell this" result is a hard stop. Also read the token's fees and check whether an admin can change them after launch.

Why this matters to you specifically: a honeypot doesn't look risky — it looks like the best-performing token you've ever seen, which is exactly the point. The green chart is the bait. The one question that matters is whether a normal wallet can actually sell, and that's checkable before you spend anything.