Investors reel from scam tokens promoted on hacked Trump-linked, Metamask founder accounts

A popular but unofficial Trump-related X account posted several dubious crypto tokens, including $POWER, as part of a scheme to rug-pull investors looking to cash in on the Trump hype as the president returns to the White House.

Hacks and scams have become especially prominent with a surge in fake crypto projects linked to politicians after the 47th US President launched a family of tokens a day before the inauguration event. 

$POWER pump and dump

Evilcos, the founder of SlowMist, mentioned in a post that the Trump-related unofficial account (@TrumpDailyPosts) promoted the $POWER project. However, the project has been rug-pulled and the posts have been deleted from the profile. 

The SlowMist founder revealed that the gas source of the scammer’s address (starting with 4GwVi8) and the gas source of the meme posted to the account of the MetaMask co-founder that was hacked earlier today are both from SideShift. Evilcos pointed out that he was not sure if this was a premeditated group that took advantage of the situation to cause chaos and reap the rewards.

MetaMask addressed the situation and accepted that Dan Finlay’s Farcaster account was compromised and used to promote a memecoin. Their team is getting in touch with their Farcaster team to help investigate the incident. It suggested that the bad actors in the market are trying to take advantage of the FOMO. Users are urged to verify any claims before investing.

Scam Sniffer, a Web3 anti-scam platform, reported that X account @TrumpDailyPosts was hacked and the attackers were promoting fake memecoins. They promoted tokens like $POWER, $FINN, and $WIN in the name of Trump. It added that the hackers were posting and deleting scam-related content to avoid detection.

It also confirmed that the gas source for the fake $POWER token to the platform was involved in the recent hack of the Farcaster account. The scammers are following a pattern of targeting high-profile accounts to pump fake projects. The MetaMask co-founder hack reportedly netted the hackers over 1,000 SOL.

Trump family token crashes

Tokens launched by the Trump family saw a huge crash while the US president attended the inauguration event. Official Trump (TRUMP) price dropped by a massive 27% in the last 24 hours. The token recently went on to hit its all-time high of $75 before dipping as far as the $31 mark. Its 24-hour trading volume is down by 43% to stand at $26 billion.

However, it still holds a market cap of $7.83 billion.

Official Melania Meme (MELANIA) suffered a worse dip as its price collapsed by a whopping 58% in the last 24 hours. MELANIA is trading at an average price of $4.52 as of press time. Its 24-hour trading volume tanked by 51% to stand at $2.3 billion with a market cap of $867 million.

The biggest crypto, Bitcoin, also saw a huge slide as FOMO calmed. BTC dropped by around 5% in the last 24 hours. Bitcoin is trading at an average price of $103,155 as of press time.

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