Copycat tokens claiming to be the official TRUMP and MELANIA coins have made a splash, racking up $4.8 million in purchases within just 24 hours. This activity came from about 12,641 wallets.
In the days leading up to his inauguration, memecoins tied to US President Donald Trump gained a lot of traction. Opportunistic traders jumped in, launching imitations of the official Trump Official (TRUMP) and Melania Official (MELANIA) tokens on the Solana network.
On January 20, a wave of new memecoins with tradeable liquidity hit Solana. A Cointelegraph analysis, using data from aggregator Birdeye, found that among these, 61 tokens claimed to be official “TRUMP” or “MELANIA” coins. They used similar ticker symbols, branding, and project descriptions.
This group of tokens highlights the growing problem of fraudulent tokens entering the market. According to security firm Blockaid, the number of malicious tokens with “Trump” in their name jumped from an average of 3,300 per day to 6,800 on the launch day of the official TRUMP token.
Alan Orwick, co-founder of Quai Network, pointed out that these tokens show how scammers exploit well-known brands. They leverage the hype around original tokens to deceive unsuspecting investors.
“Many tokens display signs of potential rug pulls,” Orwick explained. “They often have high trading volumes but lack real liquidity or value.” These imitation coins can inflate their numbers to attract buyers. In some cases, creators drain their liquidity, leaving investors stuck with tokens they can’t sell.
Investors face risks with all 61 imitation tokens. At the time of the analysis, 38 fake TRUMP tokens were trading on Solana decentralized exchanges (DEXs), along with 23 MELANIA tokens. Among the fake TRUMP tokens, only nine had liquidity pools over $10,000. Low liquidity often makes trading difficult, exposing buyers to significant slippage and price manipulation.
Within the next 24 hours, six of these tokens had their liquidity pools completely drained, effectively pulling the rug out from under investors. A seventh token saw its liquidity pool value drop from $54,000 to just over $10,000. The remaining two fake TRUMP tokens kept their liquidity, but one had zero trading volume in the next 24 hours, while the other had 99% of its supply controlled by the top two wallets.
For MELANIA token clones, only four had liquidity above $10,000 at the time of analysis. Two others had already lost their liquidity. Within 24 hours, one liquidity pool disappeared. The remaining three showed high ownership concentration, which puts smaller investors at risk of sell-offs by majority holders.
Some tokens may mislead investors with inflated market capitalizations or fully diluted valuations (FDV). Mads Eberhardt, a senior crypto analyst at Steno Research, warns that these figures are often manipulated. “I wouldn’t trust any metrics associated with cryptocurrencies that imitate others,” Eberhardt stated. “They have strong incentives to inflate their metrics to look legitimate.”
The official TRUMP memecoin launched on January 17 and quickly reached an FDV of $71 billion, briefly ranking as the 15th-largest cryptocurrency by market cap. However, after Trump’s inauguration on January 20, its FDV dropped sharply to around $40 billion, falling to 28th place in market cap rankings, according to CoinGecko.
President Trump faced criticism on social media, with some accusing him of launching his memecoin just for profits. This trend continued with the MELANIA token. “We used to have an informal rule that presidents wouldn’t start or run businesses that could pose a conflict of interest,” said Nic Carter, a partner at Castle Island Ventures, on X. “Creating a bunch of memecoins and DeFi protocols opens the door for rampant violations of the emoluments clause.”
“Goodbye to whatever hope the crypto industry had of legitimizing itself,” remarked billionaire Dogecoin (DOGE) advocate Mark Cuban. So far, TRUMP and MELANIA are the only official tokens launched, but some have started creating tokens named after other family members, leading to further losses.
According to on-chain analytics firm Lookonchain, one investor lost nearly $1 million on a token branded as BARRON, referencing one of Trump’s sons. Investors had been falling victim to fake Trump tokens even before his election victory in November 2024. In August, a fake Trump token hit $150 million in trading volume before Eric Trump publicly denied its authenticity or any family connection.
The crypto wallet linked to CIC Digital, the entity holding 80% of the official TRUMP supply, has been receiving transfers of tokens named after other Trump family members. One token labeled itself as “Official Ivanka Trump,” which sparked speculation about a new official memecoin launch that could create more overnight millionaires. However, there has been no official confirmation about these projects.
Scammers thrive on FOMO (fear of missing out), targeting inexperienced investors with tokens tied to trending events. Orwick noted that these schemes often pressure buyers into hasty decisions, leaving them with worthless assets.
Meanwhile, recent activities from the Trump-affiliated decentralized finance platform World Liberty Financial (WLF) have fueled more speculation. On January 19, blockchain data revealed that WLF purchased several Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domains, including barrontrump.eth, erictrump.eth, and trumpcoin.eth. They even acquired unrelated domains like yatogame.eth and daolationship.eth.
World Liberty Financial itself has been the target of imitations, with fake websites selling various products to scam victims, including counterfeit tokens and bogus financial services.