An overview of the most fraudulent meme tokens

Meme tokens have become so popular among developers because creating a complex technology is not necessary: it is enough to use a trending topic and simply launch a token based on it. Successful meme projects can initially reach hundreds of millions of dollars in capitalization.

For example, the official meme token of U.S. President Trump reached a peak market capitalization of $14.7 billion in the first days after its listing on exchanges, surpassing even Shiba Inu and Pepe, and its exchange rate rose from $8 to $75.

Unfortunately, this ease of startup combined with the opportunity to make a quick profit from meme token sales also attracts scammers — fraudulent projects are launched by the hundreds every day. Although most fail almost immediately, some still attract attention and scam crypto investors for millions.

1. Squid Coin

Squid Coin is a skimming meme token based on the popular South Korean TV series Squid Game. The scam involving this token has become one of the most high-profile events in the crypto industry in 2021.

Most interestingly, the scammers even managed to post their token on CoinMarketCap, which vets projects. Because of this, many users were convinced that SQUID was the original token authorized by the series' creators. The first suspicions arose when investors discovered that they were unable to sell the tokens after their purchase (the organizers disabled this option in the project's smart contract).

The scammers earned more than $3.3 million tokens, and the price of Squid Coin tokens grew by thousands of percent in just a few days. To deceive users, the scammers used the Rug Pull scheme: first, the organizers placed and promoted the token by selling it through decentralized exchanges, and then, when the market capitalization of SQUID grew significantly, the scam project team got rid of the remaining tokens, bringing the asset's price down to almost zero, and then closed the site and social networks, hiding from users.

2. BASED

After the launch of Base, a second-tier network created by the well-known cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, users immediately began issuing hundreds of meme tokens, many of which managed to skyrocket in value by tens and hundreds of thousands of percent.

Perhaps one of the most sensational tokens was BASED, which resembles the Base Layer 2 network by name. In just 20 hours after its launch, the BASED token soared in value by more than 1,000,000%, and its capitalization reached $1.39 billion — by this indicator, the BASED token surpassed even such large blockchain projects as Aave and Optimism (OP).

Many investors probably assumed that BASED was the official meme token of the L2-network Base and began to buy it actively, despite the project team repeatedly stating that they had no plans to launch their own cryptocurrency.

After a stunning growth, the price of the BASED token quickly collapsed, and soon, the token was forgotten about when it became clear that it had nothing to do with the Base team. Notably, prominent companies like Coinbase hardly release the token without prior announcements in their official channels.

3. JENNER, MOTHER and DAVIDO

In 2024, a whole scheme involving fraudulent meme tokens launched on behalf of celebrities such as American actress and movie producer Caitlyn Jenner, Australian singer Iggy Azalea, and Nigerian artiste Davido was uncovered.

In all cases, Indian entrepreneur Sahil Arora was behind the launch of the meme tokens JENNER, MOTHER, and DAVIDO, as it turned out, fraudulently gained access to celebrities' social media profiles and promoted fraudulent assets on their behalf. JENNER's capitalization reached $40 million but quickly collapsed due to active token sales.

Celebrities complained that the entrepreneur used the "Pump & Dump" scheme popular among fraudsters, when a token is first actively promoted, causing a sharp jump in price, and then quickly collapsing the rate by selling assets at the price peak. According to various calculations, the fraudster managed to earn about two million dollars only from selling these three meme tokens issued on behalf of celebrities.

4. CAR and BRAZIL

In 2024, the meme token CAR was issued on the Solana blockchain on behalf of the government of the Central African Republic (CAR), but it turned out to be a scam. It was a blatant case of scamming, as a video purportedly created on behalf of the president of the CAR was used to trick users. The video itself turned out to be a deep fake, of course.

At its peak, the market capitalization of the CAR scam meme token reached $900 million, which was about 35% of the Central African Republic's entire GDP. This makes it one of the largest meme-token scams.

This is not the only case of fraudsters launching a token on behalf of a government or official. For example, attackers also hacked into former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's social media profiles to promote the BRAZIL meme token scam.

In the end, the scammers made over $1.3 million in profits from the BRAZIL meme-token scam in just a few minutes before they were able to regain access to social networks.

5. TRUMP meme-token clones

When a project succeeds and creates a buzz around it, scammers immediately start taking advantage of it by creating similar tokens or duplicates.

The same thing happened with the official meme token TRUMP, launched by U.S. President Donald Trump in January 2025 on the Solana blockchain. As of March 2025, TRUMP is among the top four largest memcoins by capitalization, behind only Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Pepe (PEPE).

The crypto market was flooded with dozens of skim meme tokens with the same name after the launch of TRUMP and the resulting hype around this asset. The most successful clones managed to reach millions of dollars in market capitalization.

How do you avoid falling for scam meme tokens?

Unfortunately, it is not always immediately clear that a scam meme token is in front of an investor. That is why it is important to invest no more money in such assets than the user is ready to lose. In addition, diversification — ensuring the diversity of the investment portfolio — is one of the main rules for investors.

Here are some tips that will help recognize scams:

• Do not invest in projects that are not discussed in the community (on thematic forums and chat rooms);
• Invest only in assets that are pending listing on major exchanges such as Binance, OKX, Coinbase and Kraken, for example;
• Thoroughly research the project and its main channels (blogs, social media) or, in other words, do your research (DYOR);
• Do not buy dubious meme tokens from the main wallet: the user, when interacting with the token contract, risks signing an authorization that allows debiting the wallet;
• Involve experienced crypto users in the discussion: they can quickly identify signs of scam and warn less experienced investors about possible fraud;
• Follow the channels of experts who publish scam warnings.