Ever since China’s DeepSeek made headlines by emerging as a potential challenge to the US’s AI dominance, malicious crypto tokens using the “DeepSeek” name have surged to cash in on the AI platform’s popularity.
According to security firm Blockaid, at least 75 scam tokens were created as of January 27, marking a threefold increase from the previous day.
The spike is similar to the surge in fraudulent tokens following the release of US President Donald Trump’s memecoin on Jan. 18.
DeepSeek launched the latest version of its AI app on January 20, rapidly gaining popularity and topping the Apple App Store.
The company’s rise has also been accompanied by an increase in scam tokens attempting to capitalise on its success.
On their own, there are not a lot of things these tokens do to impersonate the DeepSeek brand – mostly just creating ERC-20 tokens (or Solana Memecoins) that use $SEEK as their symbol,” said Oz Tamir, Research Analyst at Blockaid told Invezz.
He highlighted that scammers focus more energy on employing an army of bots and paid social ads, promoting fake coins as the next big thing and often causing traders to buy out of FOMO.
In a post on X dated January 10, DeepSeek stated, “DeepSeek has not issued any cryptocurrency. Currently, there is only one official account on the Twitter platform. We will not contact anyone through other accounts. Please stay vigilant and guard against potential scams.”
The fake DeepSeek coins
Media reports citing data from Solana token tracker Birdeye suggest that a Solana-based token named after the Chinese AI app briefly hit a market capitalisation of $48 million, with $150 million in trading volume.
Blockchain records show the token was created on January 4, before DeepSeek’s meteoric rise in the AI world.
Despite attempts to associate it with DeepSeek’s official online presence, the company has denied involvement and warned of potential scams.
However, the token’s valuation shortly fell to $30 million, with over 22,000 wallets holding it.
Another token using the DeepSeek name saw similar speculative trading, reaching a $13 million market cap before dropping to $8.6 million.
Several tokens have emerged attempting to capitalise on the DeepSeek hype.
According to CoinMarketCap data, tokens such as DeepSeek AI Agent, DeepSeek AI Assistant, and DeepSeek R1 are actively trading currently, with market capitalisations ranging from $91,000 to $5 million.
Tamir explains that the popularity of AI in the on-chain narrative helps the scammers in such cases.
He added:
It’s not hard to imagine how a trader who’s not following closely might be led to think that this is a real thing.
Similarities with fake Trump coins
The pattern echoes activity surrounding Donald Trump’s Official Trump (TRUMP) meme coin, launched on January 18.
Blockaid had reported a rise in “Trump”-branded tokens from a daily average of 3,300 to 6,800.
Among these, 61 tokens claimed to be official TRUMP or MELANIA coins, collectively drawing $4.8 million from 12,641 wallets.
Tamir said that the recent popularity of the Trump coin, which was real, lends credibility to the idea of a big company launching a meme coin.
“While the participation of big profile companies and individuals – like President Trump – in the on-chain economy is a great indicator of how popular this space has become, it can also help scammers get away with schemes that would’ve been easy to spot in previous cycles,” the analyst explained.
He adds that the recent bull market has fueled the belief that a single ‘genius trade’ can multiply investments by 1,000 times.
While for some this had been the case, a lot of the time it is not – and more often than not, it is scammers that take advantage of this notion to get people to “ape” into their scam coins.
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