The ongoing Trump crypto saga has taken another twist — a social media hack.
On Wednesday, the X accounts of Donald Trump’s daughter and daughter-in-law — Tiffany and Lara Trump — were compromised and started shilling a Solana-based token.
The hacked accounts posted now-deleted tweets promoting a project called “World Liberty”, a purported DeFi lending protocol.
“We want to take power away from centralised banks and give it back to the people,” read one of the posts.
Average American
The provided link led to a website claiming to be “empowering the average American digitally,” complete with images of Donald Trump, the former US president and the Republican Party’s nominee in the 2024 election.
The site was created on September 3 and is registered to a private domain hosting service in the Caribbean nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis called Njalla Okta. CNBC reported that the site was set up by a co-founder of The Pirate Bay, a dark web marketplace.
The suspicious token is up 20% since its debut, according to CoinGecko.
This incident follows a report from CoinDesk revealing new details about the long-awaited Trump crypto project. Initially referred to as “The Defiant Ones”, the project now appears to have been rebranded as “World Liberty Financial.”
CoinDesk also reported that the white paper for the Trump project bore a “striking resemblance” to one from a recently hacked DeFi app called Dough Finance, which lost $2 million in a breach in July.
Several members of Dough Finance are listed in the white paper as working on the Trump crypto project.
Regaining control
Despite the hack, the Trump family regained control of their accounts within minutes. “X was amazing,” Eric Trump, Lara’s husband, posted in response.
Other projects have struggled for weeks to resolve similar issues, with scammers frequently taking advantage of compromised accounts to promote fake crypto schemes. DeFi Kingdoms, the web game, had to wait 10 days to get back into its account.
please stop buying these fake scam tokens! buy our real scam token, which is coming soon pic.twitter.com/Z4YrR1rcjJ
— Molly White (@molly0xFFF) August 8, 2024
The irony of Trump’s crypto project issuing warnings about scams was not lost on social media.
“Please don’t fall for the fake scam! Wait for the launch of the real scam!” quipped crypto researcher Molly White on X.
Despite once calling cryptocurrency a “scam” himself, Donald Trump has made a sharp U-turn in recent months and emerged as a vocal advocate for the industry in the US.
“The rules will be written by people who love your industry, not hate your industry,” Trump said in a July speech at Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville.
Trump NFTs
Last week, Trump released his fourth collection of Trump-themed NFTs and continues to promote a range of crypto-related products, including Bitcoin-themed shoes.
This shift appears to be resonating with some voters.
A recent poll conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University shows Trump leading Vice President Kamala Harris by 12 points among likely voters who own cryptocurrency, with Trump receiving 50% of the support compared to Harris’ 38%.
Trump’s newfound enthusiasm for crypto seems to have influenced his family as well.
Last month, when Eric Trump teased the family’s crypto project on X he said he had “truly fallen in love with Crypto/DeFi.”
Callan Quinn is DL News’ Hong Kong-based Asia Correspondent. Get in touch at callan@dlnews.com.