Research by Global Ledger shows that scammers took advantage of the TRUMP meme coin hype to steal more than $857 million from the cryptocurrency market in the past week.
The scammers allegedly created codes representing other national leaders, sent them to top Trump wallet holders to prove legitimacy, and then began the rug-pulling process.
Trump meme queen hype created a rug pulling craze
Donald Trump launched his meme coin, TRUMP, last Friday, sparking chaotic buzz across the cryptocurrency market. By Wednesday, the coin’s market cap had reached $8 billion, after a peak of $15 billion on Sunday.
Scammers are exploiting the token’s popularity by sending fake coins to wallets linked to the Trump team and its creators. Cryptocurrency traders, closely monitoring these wallets, mistakenly purchased these worthless tokens.
They assumed that the TRUMP meme coin team was deliberately purchasing these tokens and had inside knowledge. Fraudsters expected this behavior and took advantage of it.
according to Global ledgerAt least $857.5 million was collected through four fraudulent codes linked to international figures. These tokens – JMilei, MELON, WTRUMP, and PUTIN – were cashed out on major exchanges, including Binance, OKX, Crypto.com, and Bybit.
Further investigations found that three tokens – PUTIN, KING, and BUFFET – were linked to the same deposit wallets on Binance. These wallets withdrew $91.3 million.
The pattern indicates that one entity or group created and cashed out these tokens.
Previous reports highlighted that only 40 wallets control 94% of the total supply of TRUMP and MELANIA tokens.
Despite this focus, most holders are small investors, with over 80% of them holding less than $1,000 worth of tokens on Solana.
Additionally, 42% of buyers of Trump and Melania coins are first-time cryptocurrency investors, according to a separate survey.
“Now is the time to talk about the fact that large-scale political currencies go beyond other borders: they are not just sources of fun, the harm of which is limited to mistakes made by voluntary participants, but are tools for unlimited political bribery, including from foreign countries,” the founder Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Putin, recently books On X (formerly Twitter).
Meanwhile, Ryan Fournier, president of Students for Trump, has been under scrutiny for allegedly pulling the rug out of the TIKTOK meme.
On-chain data shows that Fournier sold $700,000 worth of the token, draining liquidity and causing its market value to plummet. Fournier denies any wrongdoing.
Overall, scammers are making the most of the current meme currency hype. Users must be careful and understand the deep risks and volatility of these tokens.
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