Despite having no official affiliation with the programme, dishonest market participants are seeking to capitalise on the current ChatGPT craze in technological circles by releasing phoney tokens with the name of the artificial intelligence chatbot on them.
These tokens have been released in the last several weeks in their hundreds. Of them, 132 unique tokens have been released on the BNB Chain, 25 on the Ethereum blockchain, and ten unique tokens on other blockchains such the Cronos, Solana, Arbitrum, and OKChain. These fraudulent transactions come in response to the decision by software behemoth Microsoft to incorporate OpenAI chatbots for search services on Microsoft’s web browsers.
While ChatGPT was developed by OpenAI, Microsoft’s own chatbot is a custom tool that is reportedly superior to ChatGPT that is available to the general public.
But, con artists are not passing up the chance to profit from the buzz. Despite warning signs, a number of “BingChatGPT” have been issued, seeded with liquidity, and are witnessing trading volumes of thousands of dollars.
Peckshield, a blockchain security company, announced in a tweet on Monday that it had discovered dozens of newly generated #BingChatGPT tokens, of which 3 appeared to be honeypots and 2 had hefty sale taxes.
In the bitcoin world, honeypots are smart contracts that promise to leak their cash to any user who transfers more money to them.
ChatGPT Tokens Scammed As Tax
A user selling $100 worth of a token receives only $50 worth, with the remaining “taxed” amount going to the creator of that smart contract. On the other hand, sales tax refers to the purposeful amount of money taken by an illegal smart contract when a related token is sold. Typically, these amounts are higher than 50%.
According to statistics from DEXTools, over 170 tokens bearing the ChatGPT name are currently available on decentralized exchanges like Uniswap and PancakeSwap.
The most well-known one is issued on Ethereum and has a market valuation of over $250 million, over 300 unique holders, and $600,000 in liquidity. A different BNB Chain-version has a market capitalization of $24 million and liquidity of $246,000. Trade volumes on such bogus tokens, and in some cases, scams, are a sign that the ideal of cryptocurrency betting is still a reality.