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. According to a Financial Times analysis, the fleet of copycat coins has prompted warnings about potential investor deception. The surge started within 30 minutes of Trump’s initial token announcement, with creators exploiting Solana ( SOL ) blockchain features that allow unrequested deposits into other wallets. Hundreds of these tokens use names connected to Trump or his family members, including “OFFICIAL TRUMP” and “OFFICIAL MELANIA,” despite having no actual association with the president. The actual Trump meme coin, shown in the chart below, is down 24.6% for the past seven days. Source: CoinGecko The analysis found 167 Trump family-themed copycat coins, with 67 using the word “official” in their names. The unauthorized tokens also target Trump’s children: 30 reference Barron, 26 mentions of Ivanka, and 10 include Eric’s name. Another 35 tokens attempt to associate with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a Trump ally. You might also like: Crypto VC funding: Taproot Wizards bags $30m, Reservoir raises $14m Brookings Institution senior fellow Eswar Prasad told the FT that Trump’s entry into meme coins has “opened the floodgates to deception and rampant speculation,” putting ordinary investors at substantial risk. The investigation revealed suspicious trading patterns. In one case, 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. The “OFFICIAL BARRON TRUMP” coin, despite a notional value of $6 billion based on its last trade, has not seen activity since Jan. 21, with its largest transaction being just $242. Columbia Business School adjunct professor Omid Malekan noted that “uninformed investors” face challenges distinguishing legitimate projects from imitations. The situation has overwhelmed some crypto exchanges, with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong acknowledging that evaluating the roughly one million new tokens created weekly 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… — Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) January 26, 2025 “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 said. “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.” Read more: NFT sales plummet 33% to $119.5m, Pudgy Penguins still in lead
