This post was originally published in [2021] and has been fully updated for 2026 with new data and tools.
Justice has finally been served, but where does that leave the investors?
On February 9, we saw the Safemoon CEO Braden Karony prison sentence 2026 handed down: 100 months in federal prison and $7.5 million in immediate forfeitures.
While the court has spoken, thousands of holders are still asking how to get their money back.
Keep reading, and I’ll share how Safemoon works, what makes it different than other cryptos, the pros and cons of it, and how it can bring value to people.
SafeMoon Tax Loss Calculator (2026)
Calculate your deductible loss following the 2026 court rulings.
SafeMoon Update 2026: Braden Karony Sentenced to 100 Months in Prison
On February 9, 2026, Safemoon reached its legal conclusion with former CEO Braden John Karony, who was sentenced to 8 years and 4 months.
The SFM token lost 100% of its value.
The CEO Karoney told investors that SafewMoons liquidity pools were “locked” and developers could not access them.
The truth is, Karony diverted over 9 million dollars from these pools to fund a lavish lifestyle.
Karony was also caught buying and selling the token at its peak prices to earn millions in profit.
By taking money from the pools, investors could not sell their tokens and lost money.
Karony was ordered to forfeit 7.5 million and several assets to pay back victims.
SafeMoon Explained: The Rise and Fall of the Most Viral Crypto Scam in History
Safemoon is a decentralized finance token, or DEFI for short. DEFI is finance that is decentralized on a blockchain. Anything with banking can be done with crypto.
Safemoon does have liquidity pools. The only way for a decentralized exchange to work is that it needs a pool of money to draw from (liquidity pools).
When it comes to the supply of Safemoon, there is a TON. The original amount of tokens that were created was 1 quadrillion tokens.
The “whole” point of creating so many tokens was to constantly BURN them.
Out of the gate, the developers burned 223 trillion coins. This “sounds” like a lot of money, but since each token is worth $0.000003 USD it’s not.
The developers behind Safemoon probably destroyed $5. Ok, maybe a little more, but the point is that it’s psychological.
I’m not completely against these marketing tactics as long as the coin solves “real-world” problems or is attempting to.
Oh, and the number of tokens that were burned is advertised on their website.
This means that the burn will be manually executed by their team and that the conditions can be tracked and advertised to the owners.
The central part of their method for burning tokens is to keep owners engaged in the long term. This is done by rewarding them for holding their tokens.
Safemoon is a cryptocurrency that launched in March. The original supply was one quadrillion tokens, but the developers burned (destroyed) 223 trillion. That left a launch supply of 777 trillion
What We Learned from SafeMoon: 3 Red Flags to Spot Crypto Rug Pulls Early
One of the advantages of investing in Safemoon is that the price could go to the moon. You could get a “huge” return on your investment, but this is a gamble.
Also, it’s probably a good idea to do as much research on the team as possible, especially the CEO John Karony.
Another advantage of Safemoon is that the project could do a lot of positive things for the world, and they do want to provide value.
One idea they have is an NFT exchange. NFT stands for Non-fungible token, and it means that 1 is unique, such as artwork.
Fungible means they are all the same, such as a Safemoon coin.
It’s important to realize that ALL these plans are ideas and are still being worked on!
The project is also planning on creating a video game, helping out developing countries, and charities. Lastly, they are talking about doing education for crypto.
The third benefit I can think of is that you will learn more about the world of crypto. One of my favorite sayings is…
Sometimes you earn and sometimes you learn!
Sometimes it does help to buy something and then learn about it because you have skin in the game. It’s a different education than just reading about it.
Just remember that with crypto, anything can happen, and it’s risky!
The Risks of ‘Reflections’: How SafeMoon Used Passive Income to Hide Fraud
One of the largest problems of buying Safemoon is that it’s hard to sell.
It’s almost like a gang where it’s hard to get out. How the creators of Safemoon made it difficult to sell the coin is by creating a fee every time someone tries to sell it.
This fee every time someone tries to sell is 10%. You might be wondering where the 10% fee goes?
Half of the 10% fee goes to the people who are still holding the coin. If you hold the token, you get rewarded by people who sell it.
The other 5% goes to buy BNB coin, and the other half goes to add liquidity on Pancake Swap. Pancake Swap is another liquidity pool that allows people to swap coins.
You can leave the Safemoon gang, but they “jump you out” and take 10% of your money, then give half of that to the people still in the gang.
Even though the name is called Safemoon, I’m not sure it’s going to deliver you safely to the moon.
It’s similar to a guy dating a girl called Angel and expecting her to be an angel!
Another con with Safemoon is, what problem does the coin solve? In the future, they have ideas of providing liquidity to people in developing countries.
They also plan on creating a video game with the token. Lastly, they plan on introducing an NFT exchange and charity drives.
The last con, which I have to mention, is that the price could go to 0. You can lose “all” of your money, but to be fair, you can lose all of your money with any investment.
The truth is, the smaller the project, the higher the risk.
Safemoon is currently on 10 exchanges, and they are all “very” small exchanges. Buying Safemoon, you could say, is similar to buying a penny stock (high risk and high reward).
Did the SafeMoon V2 Token Burn Actually Help Investors in 2026?
Safemoon will have manual coin burns whenever the developers feel like burning coins.
The white paper doesn’t explain when these Safemoon burn events will happen. At the time of this blog post, Safemoon has burned 419 trillion coins.
Safemoon started with 1 quadrillion tokens, and out of the gate, they burned 223 trillion coins. The developers have burned tokens at least 2 times.
Nobody knows (except the developers) when more coins will be burned.
It’s also possible that NO coins will be burned. It all comes down if the team that created Safemoon wants to burn more. Maybe the price starts to get low, they will just burn some.
Maybe burning the coins makes them feel rich.
Conclusion: Safemoon CEO Braden Karony prison sentence 2026
Crypto has seen some crazy things from 2021 to now.
Yes, I put a lot into Blockfi that went bust. Plus, my main crypto project, Defichain, barely survived. The coin is super down. now
Still, in the long term, there are good projects.
I used to think everything related to crypto was stupid.
The world is MUCH bigger than my ego.
I swallowed my pride and learned as much as I could. Of course, I’ve also lost a lot! Sometimes you earn, and sometimes you learn.
One of my favorite books is “Ego is the Enemy” and it’s true!
With any project all you can do is do as much research as you can and go with your gut instinct. There is risk with any project.
I do feel the largest risk is not adapting to a changing world and not learning.
Also diversify is not a bad idea.
Apart from investing, something like affiliate marketing can be a wonderful way to make extra cash.
You can do it anywhere in the world, around your schedule, in nearly any niche, and have tons of fun with very low startup cost.
Even better 1’ve been doing it for 15 years, and I’m sharing many of the tricks and secrets I’ve learned for FREE HERE.
I hope this blog post on the pros and cons of investing in Safemoon was helpful. Bye for now.