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In a recent report, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) has documented a new trend of neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and other extremist actors increasingly exploiting cryptocurrency markets to spread hate, launder ideology, and generate significant personal profit.
The report, “The Trump Administration Embraces Cryptocurrency, ‘Meme Coins’ Spread Hate and Enrich Their Creators,” finds that so‑called “meme coins” — cryptocurrencies created as jokes or viral stunts — have become a lucrative vehicle for far‑right propaganda, Nazi symbolism, and racist messaging, particularly as the Trump administration embraces crypto‑friendly policies.
Those engaged in illegal activity have long used cryptocurrencies for transactions and extremists have used it for fundraising. But now, with the spread of meme coins, they’re also using it for messaging.
GPAHE documents how creators launched meme coins featuring explicit neo‑Nazi imagery, including the Black Sun symbol, antisemitic slogans, and references to far‑right figures such as Nick Fuentes and his Groyper movement. These coins have circulated openly on major platforms like Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, which processes billions of dollars in daily trading volume. Major cryptocurrency platforms continue to profit from extremist content despite having policies that prohibit hate.
“These rules are clear, but the availability of extremist content on Binance demonstrates a serious lack of policy enforcement,” the report explains.
The investigation shows that meme coin creators have capitalized on viral political moments, including racist or inflammatory posts by US government agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Extremist developers have rapidly minted coins tied to these moments, driving speculative trading and social media engagement. In one case, a coin called $FRANKLIN used AI‑generated violent and bigoted imagery surrounding the Trump administration’s targeting of boats off the coast of Venezuela to attract attention, briefly reaching a market capitalization exceeding $24 million before collapsing.
GPAHE explains that meme coin platforms such as pump.fun have incentivized this behavior through revenue‑sharing schemes. Creators earn cryptocurrency payouts based on trading volume, receiving hundreds or thousands of dollars once their coins cross specific thresholds. The report has also found that some extremist coin creators have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars by exploiting these systems, even when their projects were short‑lived or overtly hateful.
The report highlights Binance’s use of artificial intelligence to generate automated summaries of listed coins. GPAHE found that these AI summaries often sanitized or misrepresented extremist content, describing neo‑Nazi tokens as “innovation” while omitting references to hate symbols embedded in their branding. Binance continued to profit from these trades by collecting transaction fees, effectively monetizing extremist activity, according to the report.
GPAHE places the rise of extremist meme coins within a broader crypto culture that has long tolerated misogyny, racism, and conspiracy theories. Binance permits users to buy and sell coins that reference neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes. One such coin is called “The Groyper” coin, a reference to his fanbase and followers.
The report cites research linking the male‑dominated tech and finance sectors to “rampant bigotry,” noting that crypto spaces have frequently normalized extremist language under the guise of free speech or decentralization.
In May 2025, investigators found that dozens of attendees at a Trump‑branded meme coin dinner held crypto assets featuring swastikas, antisemitic references, and racial slurs.
The investigation emphasized that cryptocurrency’s largely unregulated nature allowed extremist actors to operate with minimal oversight. Unlike traditional financial systems, crypto platforms lacked consistent enforcement mechanisms, enabling hate‑based projects to proliferate rapidly before disappearing or rebranding.
One popular meme coin platform, Pump.fun, “has no safeguards against extremism and hateful ideologies” in its user agreements that govern conduct on its platform. Pump.fun “prohibits the ‘glorification of or encouragement of acts which would cause harm to others or significant harm to property’ along with ‘any content or activity supporting or promoting terrorism or violent extremism’” in its Livestream Moderation Policy, but these do not apply to their meme coins, according the report.
GPAHE warns that this volatility does not reduce harm, as creators have often cashed out early while leaving investors and communities exposed.
Ultimately, GPAHE concluded that the crypto ecosystem had become a profitable pipeline for extremist radicalization.
Meme coins functioned not only as financial instruments but also as recruitment tools, embedding hate symbols into viral online culture and exposing younger users to extremist ideology, the report concluded.
Top photo: Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson and Crypto Czar David Sacks, among others, wait for Donald Trump in the Oval Office in November 2025 (Daniel Torok/Wikimedia Commons)