Is CAR’s exploding token a $600M deepfake scam?

Central African Republic (CAR) President’s X account announced the release of an official meme coin for the country on February 9. The poster claimed that the token would help give CAR more worldly exposure and boost national development.

However, two deepfake detectors have flagged the account’s video announcement as suspicious, raising concerns about whether the CAR token is just a big scam.

Seferbekov and Ensemble detectors found the President’s video could be a deepfake

In his X post, Faustion said:

“Today, we are launching $CAR – an experiment designed to show how something as simple as a meme can unite people, support national development and put the Central African Republic on the world stage in a unique way.” – President Faustion-Archange Touadera

In another post, the president added that he has always been supportive of crypto, and his country’s acceptance of Bitcoin as legal tender is a testament to that.

Faustian then posted a video announcement for the new CAR meme coin, inviting the public to revel in the news. 

However, Deepware’s deepfake detector has flagged the video as ‘suspicious,’ with the Seferbekov model on the checker showing an 82% chance that the video was fabricated. Similarly, the Ensemble model revealed a 60% chance.

Meanwhile, two other models on the checker tool, Avatarify and Deepware’s own checker, did not find the video to be a deepfake.

Others have also expressed their doubts about the credibility of the president’s message, presuming that his X account could have been hacked. 

In a now-deleted post, Yokai Ryujin, founder of unrevealed XYZ, warned his team to be cautious about the new meme coin. He said its domain was registered about three days ago on namecheap.com—something he thinks a president of a country would not do.

Moreover, X suspended the official account for the CAR meme coin announcements, but Faustion said he was working with the social media platform to restore the account. 

The CAR meme coin reached a record valuation of $600 million

As per the official CAR meme coin website, the project’s tokenomics is as follows: for the country’s development, 25% will go to creators, 20.7% is planned for the liquidity pool, 10% will go to charity, and 9.3% is meant for public distribution.

According to Solscan, about 33% of the CAR tokens are already in one wallet, 25% in another, and 9.81% and 8.39% are held in two other wallets.

However, the 20.7% of the token supply dedicated to liquidity has yet to be included in the token’s liquidity pool.

So far, the token has even reached a peak valuation of over $600 million before dropping to $298 million. The CAR token is currently trading at $0.2937.