Dog coin-loving crypto bros caused chaos for New York City’s dog mayoral election earlier this month when they interfered in the race to pump a meme coin named after one of the leading candidates.

According to its website, New York’s NYC Dog Mayor competition was “founded to create something fun and joyful for people at a time in which many are struggling; to provide a unique opportunity for NYC community development; and to present politics and civics in a positive, educational, and compelling way (for once.).”

So-called “doggy influencer” Bertram the Pomeranian, who has nearly 400,000 followers on Instagram, was already among the frontrunners to snatch victory.

However, his bid for the title was further boosted when holders of the namesake meme coin BERT began to employ underhand tactics to drum up voters and even discredit Bertram’s opponents.

This was done, according to one rival dog owner, “to pump their valueless shitcoin.”

Olivia Caputo , the owner of one of Bertram’s biggest rivals, Enzo the Shih Tzu, posted a lengthy statement via Instagram announcing her — and her dog’s — withdrawal from the mayoral race and explaining how it had “turned into a catalyst for spreading hate, negativity, and threats of violence towards Enzo.”

Read more: Trump sells DOGE shirts after Musk appointment, Dogecoin rally

Caputo alleges in her statement that BERT coin supporters were “offering payment/giveaways to sway people to vote for Bert,” and said that “the way they are speaking in their group chats indicates it’s clearly a pump and dump scheme, which people will ultimately suffer harm from.”

Caputo told The New York Times that she first became suspicious when, in a previous voting round, the number of votes being cast for Bertram saw a jump of more than 3,000 over the previous round.

She claimed that the increase happened at the same time as Bertram started to see increased support on social media and even financial incentives in return for votes.

She also claims to have seen Telegram chats in which Bertram’s supporters stated they would use the platform to “pump the price.”

The coin, which has been trading since mid-October, did experience a spike this week, jumping from $0.0017 on Tuesday to $0.054 on Thursday. This is despite Bertram dropping out of the race at the final stage, with his owner Kathy Grayson saying, “The whole thing has been in a way, darkly hilarious.”

“It has absorbed the anxiety facing people in human elections. People are getting worked up projecting all the human stuff,” she added.

The contest’s creator Stephen Calabria said, “Frankly, I had always envisioned this as a good faith and good-humored way to get shelter dogs adopted and to use this as a platform for good.”

He added, “If I never hear the word crypto again, it will be a blessing.”

Got a tip? Send us an email or ProtonMail. For more informed news, follow us on X, Instagram, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

The post Crypto election interference reaches dog mayor of New York appeared first on Protos.

In what can only be called an expected turn of events, the Donald J. Trump token, started as a meme coin by Martin Shkreli, supposedly with the help of Barron Trump and another underage individual, has seen all of its liquidity pulled and the price come crashing down to earth.

After the denial of involvement from the Trump team and family — regardless of whether or not Barron was actually involved — this was entirely predictable.

Is there any proof of Barron’s involvement?

While ‘pharma bro’ Shkreli tried desperately for over a month to convince all of cryptocurrency X (formerly Twitter) that Barron was responsible for the token, no one has been able to definitively prove that anyone in the Trump family was involved.

Barron Trump’s numerous social media accounts were either deleted or taken private during that period.

The token made a huge splash in June when Pirate Wires, a media organization with ties to Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, reported that Barron was involved in what they called ‘an official Trump token.’ This was objectively false.

Read more: Opinion: Pirate Wires’ Trump token reporting was irresponsible and lazy

However, after the flood of social media signaling from many close to the Trump camp the token saw its price briefly rocket in price before plummeting once it was realized that Martin Shkreli was the individual who created the coin.

Allegations of Shkreli taking advantage of an 18-year-old Barron Trump and Barron’s 17-year-old friend began to swirl. Shkreli took to X to deny the claims, saying that he simply helped them set it up, get in contact with influencers, and then handed the private keys off. He also stated that he was not offered any meaningful allocation of tokens.

What happened to the coin?

Basically, all of the locked value — millions of dollars in Solana — was taken out by an unknown party. The rug-pull was first noticed and tweeted about by @tomkysar, though the tweets have since been deleted. The exit likely netted the rug-puller a couple of million dollars in Solana.

Immediately, numerous accounts began to accuse Shkreli of taking the money, but he’s adamant that he wasn’t involved and that only Barron Trump or Barron’s best friend would be able to take the liquidity and run.

The DJT token is now down over 90% from all-time highs, currently trading for $0.0004. Whether there will be any ramifications — legal or otherwise — for anyone involved remains to be seen.

Got a tip? Send us an email or ProtonMail. For more informed news, follow us on X, Instagram, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

The post No one surprised as DJT token has finally rugged appeared first on Protos.

Convicted felon-turned-crypto influencer Martin Shkreli launched a meme coin called DJT. During a live social audio room on X (formerly Twitter), he said he didn’t own any of its supply and simply launched it to “help a friend.”

It turns out that this friend is Barron Trump, the 18-year-old son of Donald J. Trump.

As of publication time, the Solana meme coin is down 73% from yesterday’s $0.047 high.

Investigative researcher ZachXBT posted evidence that the holder of large quantities of another Shkreli meme coin, Shoggath, sold $832,000 worth of DJT within the past 24 hours. However, ZachXBT does not believe that particular wallet belongs to Shkreli.

Read more: Martin Shkreli tells reporter to ‘lick my balls,’ New York cancels his crypto event

Earlier, Shkreli sent a direct message (DM) to ZachXBT claiming that Andrew Tate had confirmed Barron Trump’s involvement.

Interestingly, it’s also apparently part of Shkreli’s parole terms that he submit full financial statements, and steer clear of “any self-employment involving access to client money or investments.”

This could potentially mean he has violated his parole by managing an investment opportunity on behalf of Barron Trump.

Why Martin Shkreli launched an immediate failure

GCR, a crypto whale trader, apparently made a large bet about a Trump family member not endorsing the meme coin. Shkreli is on the opposite side of that bet and wants to collect a payout of $100 million from GCR. 

Shkreli claimed on his live X Spaces room that he has a private message from GCR clarifying that Barron Trump’s endorsement would suffice to win the modified terms of the original bet.

A caller on his X Spaces yesterday asked Shkreli why he helped Barron create the meme coin if he didn’t personally own an allocation of tokens to sell.

Shkreli responded, “We mentioned it earlier, the same reason why you might create an NFT collection — it could be popular, and one could make money. Trump said it himself, he wants to be the crypto president.”

The caller asked a follow-up question, “So, the team held tokens that they could sell?”

He responded frankly, “That would probably be the correct assumption.”

Got a tip? Send us an email or ProtonMail. For more informed news, follow us on X, Instagram, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

The post Did Martin Shkreli violate his parole by launching DJT coin with Barron Trump? appeared first on Protos.

Despite constantly shilling $JENNER, which launched on the Solana meme coin platform pump.fun, it appears as though Caitlyn Jenner — or whoever is running her account — has an issue with the individual who supposedly helped her get it off the ground.

While the token’s market cap is currently sitting around $25 million, the value has fluctuated 60% over the past couple days. There is no known use case for the token and its unclear how Jenner is involved other than by shilling the coin on her X (formerly Twitter) account.

After an individual tweeted “ARREST SAHIL RIGHT NOW,” Jenner replied with, “I have a feeling that could be in his future. Too many powerful ppl he fucked with.”

Deleted tweets and other celebs

According to a Decrypt article, Sahil Arora has taken credit for a number of recent celebrity meme coin launches, including one linked to Rich the Kid. The rapper claimed that his X profile had been hacked but later decided to take ownership over the token.

Jenner took to X to advertise another token called $BBARK, seemingly named after her dogs Bertha and Baxter, but deleted the tweet later to add the fact that she was an “early investor” and that the tweet was “just an ad not my token or coin. Completely focused on $jenner.” She tweeted this nearly a dozen times over the day before deleting the ‘ad’ altogether. $BBARK has already fallen to nearly zero dollars in value.

Read more: Behind Fox News republican Caitlyn Jenner’s crypto cash grab

Rapper and singer Iggy Azalea tweeted that she “was in contact enough [with Aroroa] to smell he’s a bitch.” She added that she would be “deleting all [her] shitposting so [her] manager doesn’t think [she’s] gone insane.”

It’s unclear when, but Azalea has also hinted toward starting a token of her own, stating “I actually f*ck with y’all, be back later.”

Regardless, Arora has claimed that he’s in contact with dozens of celebrities and will be creating pump.fun meme tokens for the lot of them. There has, however, been no confirmation of these claims.

It’s also unclear how much of a say the 74 year-old Caitlyn Jenner has in regard to her tweets, as rumor is that her ‘live-in agent’ Sophia Hutchins has been in full control of her X account.

Got a tip? Send us an email or ProtonMail. For more informed news, follow us on X, Instagram, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

The post Caitlyn Jenner says Sahil Arora ‘f*cked with too many powerful people’ appeared first on Protos.

A memecoin “OZMPC”, unaffiliated with the trending blood sugar drug, launched on Coinbase’s blockchain, Base. OZMPC is an abbreviation of Ozempic, yet is completely unauthorized by Novo Nordisk, the Danish maker of the Type 2 diabetes prescription drug. Novo Nordisk has not bothered to comment on the coin. The pharma giant owns global rights to the drug Ozempic and could assert its legal rights against the operators of this unlicensed crypto token.

OZMPC’s creators imposed a 50% tax for the first two blocks. This instantly drained some early buying into the project. The team claimed that this tax counteracted malicious “sniper bots.”

The team claims that they will re-route these proceeds, which totaled less than $1 million, to support the project’s development. For example, they want to pay marketers and animators, as well as reduce the supply of the token. They claim to have already used approximately $150,000 to burn some of OZMPC’s token supply, for example.

The token has fallen 65% from its all-time high and now trades far below one penny. 

With a negligible market capitalization, Gecko Terminal prominently warns potential buyers that its liquidity could lead to prices that “differ drastically” across exchanges.

Read more: Bots are front-running bots front-running Base meme coins

Another example of meme coin mania

The project is emblematic of the current mania in meme coins. Through taxation of early buyers who conducted minimal due diligence during the first two blocks at its outset, the project siphoned hundreds of thousands of dollars from early buyers. The team claims many of these purchases would not have been authentic purchases but rather from “sniper bots.” In any case, it claims it will put those funds back into the project.

Worse, because the token uses the registered name of a patented drug, its founder could face legal ramifications for authorized use.

The pattern repeats endlessly across the meme coin industry. In many ways, it resembles the ICO mania of early 2018. The only difference is that this time, meme coin founders do not even bother to write a whitepaper, roadmap, or make any formal plan for buyers’ money.

Read more: Meme coins add 2017 ICO-style ‘utility’ to offerings

Edit 06:12 UTC, Apr 2: Deleted an inaccurate dollar amount and percentage figure of the launch tax, including citations. Added claims from OZMPC about intended use of tax proceeds, the value of initial liquidity, and its belief about sniper bots. Deleted a claim that founders had pocketed proceeds of the tax.

Got a tip? Send us an email or ProtonMail. For more informed news, follow us on X, Instagram, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

The post Unauthorized Ozempic meme coin imposed 50% tax at outset appeared first on Protos.