The day before Christmas I was on my phone, browsing apps, and among them, as always, Telegram. Checking messages, replying to friends. Among my subscribed channels is the unofficial Trump channel, which used to post the extremely entertaining tweets of the 45th president and has since switched to Donald's press releases. (Which by no means hold the wit of the tweets of yesteryear). Telegram has flagged the channel as fake, not surprised, I think it's obvious, but I also think it's good to remind everybody that this channel is not the real Trump.
So far, so nothing unusual, the preview of a new post on that channel peaked my interest, so I decided to take a quick look into the channel that day and was surprised.
I have to admit, it took me a while to understand what I was reading. I first wondered if Trump had started promoting Melania's NFTs or it was just advertisement for some kind of help. None of that, instead I was greeted by messages referencing a so-called "Trump Coin". The channel admin really started a scam. 'Make 5k out of 1k within 24 hours' and 'bonus payments' are promised. Next, there is probably a guarantee of a white Christmas in Australia. Let's see what this miracle coin can even do.
What is this bogus "Trump Coin"?
The "Trump Coin" is a BEP-20 token on the Binance Smart Chain. It was created on 23 Dec 2021 at 11:55:26 GMT with a supply of 100 million tokens. Not a hard thing to do, not even by a longshot. As far as I can tell, the costs differentiate between roughly 0.8 BNB and 3 BNB, depending on the complexity of the token. Whereby I doubt that the token has any kind of complexity at all. There is no website, white paper or other references. Only the channel promotes this token to over 140 thousand Telegram users. Otherwise no further information exists.
It's cheap to create a token on the Binance Smart Chain. Binance, still the biggest exchange based on volume, has a lot of customers, so many BNB holders and with that a lot of possible victims. Of course, low-cost production of a token is not absolute proof of fraud, but it is an indication that the target is not an honorable one.
How to get the scam going
After the creation of the Token on the BSC the transfers began to multiple wallets. Only a handful of transaction have unique senders in it, the creator of the token generated multiple wallets and transferred tokens to them. Just a way to hide the obvious fact, that there is still only one entity holding and controlling the whole supply of that token.
And with that the fake trading could begin, trading the tokens between those wallets raised the chart to produce some staggering returns. Looks quite familiar right?
A look back prior in 2021 of a token based on a popular quite bloody korean Netflix show, can you spot the difference?
The marketing campaign
I'm pretty sure at this state you know what comes next. Shameless claims and trying to pressure readers to buy that shittoken.
They even claimed that they bought an ad on Times Square. Yeah for sure, such a beautiful peace of art. I guess Paint seems to be the best software able for that kind of job.
Also quite funny is, that Trump itself doesn't even like cryptocurrencies, he stated:
Look, I want a currency called the dollar, I don’t want to have all these others, and that could be an explosion someday — the likes of which we’ve never seen. It will make the big tech explosion look like baby stuff. I think it’s a very dangerous thing.
Donald Trump on FOX
Source
All while trying to promote the Melanias NFTs, but that's another topic.
The role of the exchanges
In between all the news, reports are also surfacing that the scammers are trying to get the token listed on different exchanges. Among them coingecko:
They fill out the form and of course it gets rejected because those exchanges have a working Due Diligence. Because a quick automated audit delivers the following result:
...
Of course I'm joking the whole response from coingecko seems to be like this:
Because we got this:
Thanks very much, it seems that you can trust the reviewing process of Coingecko, and that we don't have to verify every freaking coin on their exchange.
The purpose of an exchange is not only to bring buyer and seller together but also to verify the stuff that is listed and with that to build trust into the system itself.
For example, the Wirecard scandal in Germany. The company reached such a size, despite corresponding frauds, that the largest stock exchanges picked up the stock and it was also added to the German stock index.
The German stock index. Think about that for a second. The huge bloated construct was suddenly next to Deutsche Bank and BMW on a common list. A real accolade.
This also acted as a confidence inspiring feature to the average consumer/investor that the stock is to be trusted and is a real functioning company.
After the collapse of the stock, steps were also taken to make the stock index stricter, because people had lost confidence in the index and the listing procedure.
Same principle in the crypto space, the scammers try to build trust and then shamelessly exploit it. Here, every means is used to build trust and even a listing can be a crucial building block in the overall plan for the scam to work.
Cui bono?
Yes, sure, the obvious answer: "The scammer!". But since this is a zero-sum game where not everyone can win, there has to be damage on the other side. And I think that the damage is always greater every time, because trust is also destroyed.
Of course, those who are directly affected are those who bought the token and in the end have to realize that what they bought is not worth a cent. But if the person was absolutely not familiar with crypto before and just wanted to read Trump's tweets, the entire crypto community loses a possible new member. Because simply the first thing the person came in contact with was a scam and that automatically stamps the entire system as well.
Thus, I'm not surprised by statements of some politicians, which crypto as a threat or criminal as a whole.
Of course, I want to draw attention to this issue, we need to tackle such scams and eliminate them directly. This includes exchanges needing to do reasonable due diligence before listing a coin or token. Listing only to respond to reports and then removing the shitcoin later is the wrong way to go. We have seen this with the Squid Coin Token, the buyers were not able to even sell this, until it was ultimately to late.
Stay safe in the crypto space, inform others, do your own research and do not buy that Trump Coin, the rug pull will happen, sooner as you might think.
Rona Barrett: If you lost your fortune today, what would you do tomorrow?
Donald Trump: Maybe I'd run for president. I don't know.
References:
The Telegram Fake Trump Channel
Tokensniffer on Trump Coin
Poocoin on Trump Coin
Coingecko on Trump Coin
How to make your own cryptocurrency scam
How to Avoid a Crypto Rugpull ft. Squid Game Crypto
Wasn’t there another Trump Coin launched back in 2016? Or maybe it was called MAGA Coin?
Grifters gonna grift.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Yes, you are right, there is a maga coin.
At least I found a website: https://magacoin.vip/ and a token for that.
The token reached a 20/100 score, seems like a totally trustworthy investment.
https://tokensniffer.com/token/0x3EF144cB45C8a390EB207A6aa9bFcf3DA639cb5C
i really don't understand how people are so susceptible to these kinds of scams. or, what i mean is, why is there not better and more direct education about how to realize this?
or is the education fine, but then maybe some crypto DOES see a big rise in value, and now all that education goes out the door?
for me, it just seems mind-numbingly obvious that it makes no fucking sense that so many different crypto coins/tokens can exist simultaneously and many of them see good returns. the world will never need so many types of currency, yet someone will see a brand new coin that has no utility whatsoever and .. what? is it that they think it probably IS a scam but they are going to beat it? try to ride the pump with the scammer and get out in time? or are they actually hypnotized?
it's a wild world that we live in. ty for this post, i definitely had not heard about trump coin but i would just assume it would go the way of the steaks!
Thanks for your reply. 😃
The reasons are certainly varied as to why someone would want to buy the coin.
Some are certainly hoping to catch the next Dogecoin or ShibaInu, simply because they see it as a memetoken. Others see the exorbitant returns and, again you are right, greed makes blind in this case.
Meanwhile, the scammers have also put up a website (scam-site: https://cointrump.info/) where they talk about Trump's re-election, exaggerated returns and that the coin is "rugpull-free".
However, I do think that education is an integral part of the defensive measures. Education about not being trusted and to always verify those project is key. People can't see the fraud and the futility if they are not able to do so in the first place.
But even with sufficient education, there will always be the cases that people just see the greed or simply don't look enough.
In fact, the biggest profit of the scammers is when people start recommending the coin to their friends and relatives and repeat the promises. In this way, people add the trust from the relationship on top of everything else, which then usually acts like a chain reaction.
And to most of those who just want to join the pump without dump is said that with SquidToken a mechanism alone made the sale impossible. The position could not be liquidated no matter what was tried.
well, for sure, the whole "when people start recommending the coin to their friends and relatives and repeat the promises" is like the backbone of all these crypto scams
i told my friend when he got super into Shiba, that i thought i knew a pretty good formula for making money off of a new crypto coin if he wanted to make one - (i was just using this as a way to try to show him why i didn't think it made sense for him to be so into shiba at that point in time)
... i could keep going with the steps but i don't think i need to. though there are other silly things i think people do, like
i mean, surely there is some dumb luck that must happen along the way too, but this kind of thing is easily repeatable. just getting people thinking they're invested (when really what they "own" is like max $5 but so many tokens that they see huge profits with just tiny swings in their favor) is what matters most.
it's just crazy!
Indeed it is.
This whole plan sound also like a lot of some coins, one can also easily buy a bunch of reddit comments and votes, tiktok and other social media influence.
Kinda reminds me of Bitconnect and those influencers like Craig Grant, CryptoNick, Ryan Hildreth and, of course, Trevor James (Who was also on steem and with that Hive (@trevonjb))
After the whole thing imploded, all those influencers who have earned through those affiliations-systems (One reason I don't like those affiliate system, reward for life from recommending that service? Seems also suspicious for me.) and tried to shrug it just off. After they made their bucks.
I have found also now a interview with Trevon James by Coffeezilla, what I'm watching right now.
(I'm way to often on Youtube, I guess, but I have missed that interview.)
But it's interesting just to see the influencer side and they also know it of course, but they have enough criminal energy to pull this off.
It's making me kinda sad, but I'm still hoping that one day we have spread the knowledge so far that those scams are quickly dying before they can harm anyone. But things like Theranos and Wirecard are making me nervous, that scams might be inevitable. Crypto is better than that, has to be.
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