Donald Trump's Meme Coin Launch Has Unleashed a Torrent of Copycat Tokens, Prompting Warnings of Investor Deception

More than 700 unauthorized cryptocurrency tokens have been sent to Donald Trump's digital wallet in the three weeks following his official meme coin launch.

A wave of copycat cryptocurrency tokens has flooded into Donald Trump’s digital wallet following his official meme coin launch last month.

However, the fleet of unauthorized coins has sparked concerns over potential investor deception.

The surge in copycat coins began within 30 minutes of Trump’s initial token announcement on Dec. 21. Creators are exploiting a feature of the Solana (SOL) blockchain that allows unrequested deposits into other wallets.

Despite having no actual association with the former president, hundreds of these tokens use names connected to Trump or his family members, including “OFFICIAL TRUMP” and “OFFICIAL MELANIA.”

The real Trump meme coin, shown in the chart below, is down 24.6% for the past seven days.

The Financial Times analysis found a total of 167 copycat coins themed around the Trump family. Of these, 67 use the word “official” in their names.

The unauthorized tokens also target Trump’s children, with 30 referencing Barron, 26 mentioning Ivanka, and 10 including Eric’s name. A further 35 tokens attempt to associate with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a Trump ally.

“Trump’s entry into meme coins has opened the floodgates to deception and rampant speculation, putting ordinary investors at great risk,” Eswar Prasad, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told the FT.

The investigation also uncovered suspicious trading patterns. In one instance, an account purchased $100,000 of a fake “Official Trump” coin and sold the entire holding 12 seconds later at a loss.

Many tokens show minimal trading activity. Despite a last-traded value of $6 billion, the “OFFICIAL BARRON TRUMP” coin has not seen activity since Jan. 21, with its largest transaction being just $242.

“Uninformed investors will have a hard time telling the real projects from the copycats,” said Omid Malekan, an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School.

The situation has proved overwhelming for some crypto exchanges. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong noted that evaluating the roughly one million new tokens created each week is “no longer feasible.”

We need to rethink our listing process at @coinbase given there are ~1m tokens a week being created now, and growing. High quality problem to have, but evaluating each one by one is no longer feasible. And regulators need to understand that applying for approval for each one is…

“And regulators need to understand that applying for approval for each one is totally infeasible at this point as well (they can’t do 1m a week),” Armstrong added. “It needs to move from a an allow list to a block list, and utilize customer reviews/automated scans of onchain data etc to help customers sift through. That and we’ll continue integrating native DEX support more deeply. Customers shouldn’t need to know or care whether the trade is happening on a DEX or CEX.”