SafeMoon was released in March 2021, a compound of "Safe" and "Moon." The token was released with the slogan of landing "Safely to the moon," derived from the slang phrase used in the cryptocurrency community; "To the moon," which is used to describe a crypto token "to quickly rise in price." The token had no utility and team when it was launched. Upon release, Vice reported that between March 14 and April 21 of 2021, SafeMoon increased in value by 23,225% following celebrity endorsements from musicians Lil' Yachty and Nick Carter, YouTuber Jake Paul, social media hype, new exchange listings, and retail investors. These celebrities were later sued by many SafeMoon investors as part of a class-action lawsuit branding SafeMoon to be a part of a pump and dump scheme.

In April 2022, Stephen "Coffeezilla" Findeisen, a prominent independent researcher who investigates crypto scams accused the SafeMoon team of misappropriating millions of dollars. According to Findeisen, SafeMoon CEO Karony has been removing funds from the liquidity pool. Findeisen found evidence of transactions which showed SafeMoon's liquidity wallet moving funds to a wallet dubbed the "Gabe (6abe) wallet," which withdrew funds to a separate company run by John Karony. Former SafeMoon CTO; Thomas "Papa" Smith was the only person who responded to Findeisen's claims stating that funds were taken from the “locked liquidity pool” before Karony’s appointment. He sent Smith evidence of this in the form of a blockchain transaction showing an outflow of 36.7 trillion tokens from the liquidity pool, dated March 5, 2021.

On February 18, 2022, in a class-action lawsuit filed against SafeMoon that alleged the company is a pump and dump scheme, Paul was named as a defendant along with musician Nick Carter, rappers Soulja Boy and Lil Yachty, and social media personality Ben Phillips for promoting the SafeMoon token on their social media accounts with misleading information. On the same day, the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a lawsuit against Bitconnect that the Securities Act of 1933 extends to targeted solicitation using social media. Findeisen, who had just shone a light on the 2022 SafeMoon fraud allegations supported the claims that Paul and Phillips were pumping and dumping Safemoon tokens during this time, which saw a decline of 96% in token price. In May 2022, multiple SafeMoon investors filed another class-action lawsuit against SafeMoon for security fraud.