Trump cryptocurrency ‘opened the floodgates to deception’, experts warn as army of digital imposters try to cash in on his name

calling cryptocurrency “a scam”, Donald Trump made a theoretical fortune of billions after launching a self-named and highly controversial meme coin immediately before his second inauguration in January.

Former president Donald Trump made a theoretical fortune of billions after launching his own meme coin, named after himself, ahead of his second inauguration in January.

But an army of digital imposters have since tried to cash in on the president’s name and online presence to make their own crypto killing, a report in the Financial Times has revealed.

Hundreds of “copycat and spam coins” were uploaded to Trump’s official wallet in cyberspace, with creators sending more than 700 new meme coins to the wallet in recent weeks, according to the report.

Many of the coins were named after Trump or his family members – but none of them had any formal connection.

Speculators could be easily duped by the names, which made it seem like the fake coins were allied to the real $Trump cryptocurrency, experts said.

The genuine coin has seen a precipitous collapse in value and those buying the fakes risked the digital equivalent of being taken to the cleaners, they added.

Eswar Prasad, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an economics professor at Cornell University, told the FT that by launching his own coin, Trump had “opened the floodgates to deception … and at a minimum to rampant speculation”.

“Ordinary investors buying into fake or copycat coins just exposes them to enormous risk,” he said.

More than 200 of the fake coins had Trump family names, including Official Trump and Official Melania.

The first lady launched her own official meme coin, $Melania, within days of her husband, which analysts say immediately halved the value of $Trump and sparked a slide that has continued since.

The names of four of Trump’s five children were also popular among the copycats, with his youngest son, Barron, accounting for 30, his daughter Ivanka next with 26, and older sons Don and Eric Jr with 14 between them.

Other new cryptocurrency found in the Trump wallet featured names including “Elon” and “Musk”, referring to the world’s richest man and presidential acolyte currently taking a wrecking ball to US federal institutions as a designated “special government employee”.

Six of the fake coins used the same name and symbol as Trump’s official currency, while others were more obvious scams, including Official Hitler and Poo Coin.

The scammers were so keen to get in on the act that fakes began appearing almost immediately after the real thing, the FT said.

The first copycat coin was “minted” within 29 minutes of the announcement of the official Trump coin on his Truth Social platform on 18 January, while a speculator ahead of the game deposited the first Melania coin into the Trump digital wallet more than a day before the authentic version was launched.

Trump’s dalliance with the crypto market, meanwhile, has drawn strong criticism from ethics watchdogs, economists and some industry insiders.

Prasad told the Guardian last month: “The Trump meme coin represents the intersection of Trump’s grifting tendencies and his administration’s embrace of cryptocurrencies, along with his dismissive attitude toward government regulation.”