Token TRUMP and MELANIA Counterfeits Have Attracted 4.8 Million USD in 24 Hours

The memecoin named after US President Donald Trump has surged in popularity in the days leading up to his inauguration, with many traders taking the opportunity to release fake tokens of Trump Official (TRUMP) and Melania Official (MELANIA) on the Solana network. On January 20, thousands of new highly liquid memecoins that can be traded were launched on Solana, according to data analysis from the Birdeye aggregation tool. Of these, 61 self-described tokens are officially named ‘TRUMP’ or ‘MELANIA’. These fake tokens have raised $4.8 million from 12,641 wallets in a day. Only intentionally mimicking the original version tokens were analyzed, while tokens with satirical or disclaiming statements were excluded. These tokens represent a large number of counterfeit tokens that are infiltrating the market. Security company Blockaid has found that the number of counterfeit tokens released under the name “Trump” has surged from an average of 3,300 per day to 6,800 on the official launch day of TRUMP.

Alan Orwick, co-founder of the Layer-1 blockchain project Quai Network, said that these tokens reflect scammers exploiting famous brands while leveraging the power behind the original tokens to deceive naive investors. “Most of these tokens exhibit characteristics of pump-and-dump scams, often manifested through high trading volumes but lack liquidity or fundamental value,” Orwick said. Such counterfeit coins are artificially inflated to attract buyers. Other coins have had all liquidity withdrawn by creators, leaving investors trapped and unable to sell. Investors are at risk of losing money in 61 counterfeit tokens At the time of analysis, 38 fake TRUMP tokens and 23 fake MELANIA tokens are being traded on Solana’s DEX platforms. Among the fake TRUMP tokens, only nine tokens have at least $10,000 in their liquidity pool. Low liquidity often hinders transactions, causing buyers to suffer significant price slippage and price manipulation. Within 24 hours, six tokens have been completely drained of liquidity, leading to a cascading effect. Another token has seen a significant drop in liquidity from $54,000 to $10,000. The remaining liquidity of the two TRUMP tokens is still intact. However, one token has experienced zero trading volume in the next 24 hours, while the remaining token has 99% of the supply controlled by the top two wallets.

Meanwhile, only four copies of the MELANIA token have liquidity over $10,000 at the time of analysis, while two other tokens have been delisted. Within 24 hours, one of the liquidity pools disappeared. The remaining three tokens show a high level of concentration, making small investors vulnerable to panic selling by large holders. Some tokens may even deceive investors with high market capitalization or completely diluted valuations (FDV), which high-level cryptocurrency analyst at Steno Research, Mads Eberhardt warns are easy to manipulate. “I will not trust any data related to cryptocurrencies imitating other types. They have a strong incentive to inflate their data in a fake way to appear legitimate,” Eberhardt said. TRUMP Token officially surges before a sharp decline Token TRUMP was officially launched on January 17th and quickly skyrocketed to a market capitalization of $71 billion, temporarily ranking as the 15th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. However, its market capitalization has sharply declined to around $40 billion after Trump’s inauguration on January 20, dropping it to 28th place in the market capitalization rankings, according to CoinGecko. President Trump has received a lot of criticism on social media, as people accuse him of launching his own memecoin for profit, with the token MELANIA then doubling in value. “Basically, we used to have an unofficial rule that presidents wouldn’t start or run businesses that could create conflicts of interest. Creating a series of memecoins and DeFi protocols opens up the possibility of widespread violations of the emoluments clause,” said Castle Island Ventures partner Nic Carter on X. “The crypto industry may have missed the opportunity or prospect to be recognized and legalized,” billionaire Mark Cuban said. To date, TRUMP and MELANIA are the only official tokens launched, but some have created tokens named after other members of the family, which is believed to lead to additional losses. According to the analysis company Lookonchain, an investor has lost nearly 1 million dollars for a token called BARRON, referring to one of Trump’s sons. Investors have become victims of fake Trump tokens even before he won the election in November 2024. In August, a fake Trump token reached a trading volume of $150 million before Eric Trump publicly denied its authenticity or any connection with the family. Speculators betting on the next Trump memecoin lottery The digital wallet linked to CIC Digital, the entity holding 80% of the official TRUMP supply, has received transfers of tokens placed under the names of other Trump family members. A wallet labeled ‘Official Ivanka Trump’ has fueled speculation about an official new memecoin launch that could potentially create millionaires overnight, although there is still no official confirmation of the legitimacy of these projects.

Scammers thrive on FOMO (fear of missing out) psychology, targeting inexperienced investors with tokens linked to trending events, said Orwick of Quai Network. These schemes often pressure buyers to make hasty decisions only to end up with bitter outcomes. Meanwhile, recent activities from the decentralized financial platform World Liberty Financial (WLF) linked to Trump continue to fuel speculation. On January 19th, blockchain data revealed that WLF had purchased several Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domains, including barrontrump.eth, eritrump.eth, and trumpcoin.eth. It even bought unrelated domains like yatogame.eth and daolationship.eth. World Liberty Financial itself is also the target of numerous imitations, with counterfeit websites selling various products to victims, including fake tokens and counterfeit financial services. DYOR! #Write2Earn #TRUMPTokenWatch $TRUMP {spot}(TRUMPUSDT)