QAnon world is being flooded with a currency scam in the form of ‘Trumpcoins’ peddled by fake celebrity accounts purporting to be Elon Musk, Mel Gibson, Kirstie Alley, and even
Denzel Washington.
As hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng explain in this week’s episode of
Fever Dreams, the Trumpcoin boasts a “Keep America Great” logo and “sort of a Trumpian face on it” that “looks like maybe something Caligula might’ve stamped a coin with back in the day.” It’s going for $30 on Telegram—the social media app where the alt-right fled after the Jan. 6 riot as Twitter banned Q content—and puppet accounts are promising the little coins will skyrocket in value as soon as Trump retakes his rightful office, maybe to as much as $400 or even $10,000, send money now. Or, as the fake Denzel Washington account promises buyers, “THE LAST DAY IS HERE. The countdown has started. It’s all part of the show, a show that will leave everyone speechless. Today is the last day and after this a lot of things will change...check the availability and order here at official Trumpcoins dot com.”
The fake accounts are gaining enough traction that real-life D-listers like
Kirstie Alley have been forced to put out Tweets clarifying that they are not, in fact, selling Trumpcoins on Telegram in their spare time. Meanwhile, an anti-Trumpcoin faction is trying to warn Q-believers against the grift, and claiming the Trumpcoins are being promoted by accounts originating in Southeast Asia.
As Sommer notes, “I think the lesson of Trumpcoin is that when you have a situation like QAnon, these people have already self-identified as extremely gullible. And so a lot of people are then going to come in and sort of try to feed at the trough there.”
