- ONDO has risen to the limelight amid an emerging crypto tokenization narrative.
- Amid the hype, scammers have launched copycat tokens to rob unsuspecting investors.
- Find out how to stay safe in this article.
Scammers often pull on strong emotions to draw in their victims. This is equally true in crypto, where fear of missing out or hoping for quick gains can cloud judgment.
In the latest instance, these bad actors want to take advantage of the hype around ONDO, an emerging crypto asset tied to one of the space’s largest securities tokenization projects.
Clone Tokens Emerge Amid ONDO Hype
With tokenization gaining attention as an emerging crypto narrative in recent years, ONDO has come up on the radar of most crypto investors.
Sponsored
Ondo Finance, the project behind the token, is backed by traditional finance and crypto giants like Goldman Sachs and Coinbase. The project exposes tokenized versions of BlackRock’s short-term U.S. treasuries ETF and money market fund.
With ONDO set to serve as the governance token for ONDO DAO, which oversees changes to Flux Finance, a protocol built by the project to allow DeFi natives to lend their stablecoins to qualified Ondo Finance investors for yield, several investors are piling in with the hope of riding the tokenization hype train.
Sponsored
The significant interest in the token saw its value surge over 3,100% within its first four days of trading to highs of around $0.32 from an initial price of $0.01. Amid the perceived excitement, however, scammers have been taking notes.
According to a DEX Screener search at the time of writing, there are at least four copycat ONDO tokens across Solana, BSC, and Ethereum. Aside from the potential risk of rugpulls, at least one of these copycat tokens has been flagged as a honeypot, a contract designed to divert received assets to an exploiter.
How To Stay Safe
Copycat tokens and honeypot scams around hyped emerging projects like ONDO are commonplace in the crypto space as they try to take advantage of the fear of missing out experienced by investors when projects trend. Below are tips to avoid falling victim to these types of scams:
- Always confirm token contracts when buying assets tied to emerging projects that may not be available on your preferred exchange. You can check crypto data aggregation sites like CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko.
- Be cautious when buying tokens with low liquidity.
- Always do your research about a project and team before jumping in.
On the Flipside
- The legitimate Ondo Finance token is now available for trading on multiple exchanges, including Coinbase.
- One of the ONDO BSC clones already boasts a market cap of $14.2 million, highlighting the high-risk appetite among crypto market participants.
Why This Matters
With copycat tokens bearing the same ticker as the original ONDO token on some decentralized trading platforms, investors must be aware of their existence and know how to stay safe.
Read this to learn about similar happenings around Elon Musk’s Grok AI:
Investor Alert: GROK Tokens Are Unrelated to Musk’s xAI
Optimism and Base are set to jump ahead of the competition in the race to prepare for the Ethereum Dencun upgrade. Find out more:
Optimism, Base Deploy ETH Blobs on Devnets Ahead of Dencun
