What is Elephant Money (ELEPHANT) crypto coin? Full breakdown of tokenomics, risks, and real-world performance in 2026

What is Elephant Money (ELEPHANT) crypto coin? Full breakdown of tokenomics, risks, and real-world performance in 2026

Jan, 16 2026

Elephant Money (ELEPHANT) is a decentralized finance project built on BNB Smart Chain that claims to be a "global decentralized community bank." But behind the grand label lies a crypto asset with a 496 trillion token supply, a 10% transfer fee, and trading volume so low it barely registers on the market. As of January 2026, ELEPHANT trades at $0.00000005412 - down over 90% from its all-time high in 2022 - with only $22,000 traded in the last 24 hours. This isn’t a startup trying to break through. It’s a project barely holding on.

How Elephant Money (ELEPHANT) actually works

Elephant Money isn’t just one token. It’s a two-token system: ELEPHANT and TRUNK. ELEPHANT is the reward token. TRUNK is its stablecoin, designed to hold a value of $1. The idea is simple: you lock up BUSD and ELEPHANT as collateral, mint TRUNK, and then earn rewards by staking ELEPHANT or providing liquidity.

Every time someone transfers ELEPHANT, a 10% fee kicks in. Half of that (5%) gets distributed to all ELEPHANT holders as a reward. The other half (5%) gets locked into a liquidity pool on PancakeSwap. That’s meant to create passive income for holders and stabilize the token’s value. But in practice, it makes trading expensive. If you buy ELEPHANT and want to sell it a week later, you’re paying 20% in fees just to get out - 10% when you sell, and another 10% when the buyer sells it later. That kills turnover.

TRUNK, the stablecoin, is 75% backed by BUSD and 25% by ELEPHANT. That’s unusual. Most stablecoins like USDT or USDC are 100% backed by cash or cash equivalents. TRUNK’s partial reliance on ELEPHANT - a token that’s lost 90% of its value - makes it risky. If ELEPHANT crashes further, TRUNK could lose its peg. The protocol charges a 1% fee every time you mint or redeem TRUNK, which is supposed to fund more BUSD backing. But with so little volume, that fee barely moves the needle.

Tokenomics that don’t add up

The biggest red flag? The supply. Nearly 500 trillion ELEPHANT tokens exist. That’s more than the total number of grains of sand on Earth. It’s not just high - it’s absurd. When a token has that many units, each one is worth almost nothing. $0.00000005412 isn’t a price. It’s a decimal point exercise.

Compare that to Bitcoin. There are 21 million BTC. Each one is worth tens of thousands of dollars. ELEPHANT’s market cap is $26 million, but you’d need to own over 480 billion tokens to make $26,000. No one thinks in those numbers. Retail investors don’t buy 480 billion of anything. They buy 10, 100, or 1,000 units. Elephant Money’s design pushes away the very people it claims to serve.

The 10% transfer fee sounds like a way to reward holders. But it’s also a tax on movement. Real markets need liquidity. Liquidity needs easy trading. Elephant Money makes trading costly, slow, and frustrating. That’s why daily volume is under $25,000. For a project with a $26 million market cap, that’s a turnover rate of 0.08%. Healthy DeFi projects run at 5-10%. Elephant Money is barely breathing.

Security claims vs. reality

The project says it’s been audited by Certik and PeckShield. That’s true. Those are reputable firms. But audits don’t guarantee success. They just check for code bugs. They don’t evaluate tokenomics, market demand, or whether a project can survive in the real world.

You can have perfect code and still fail if no one wants to use it. That’s Elephant Money’s problem. The code may be clean. But the design is broken. The massive supply, the punishing fees, the weak liquidity - none of that was audited. Those are business decisions, not technical flaws.

And the user base? Only 21,650 wallets hold ELEPHANT. That’s fewer than a small town. Most of those wallets are likely empty. On Reddit and Telegram, discussions are quiet. One user on r/BNBChain said the TRUNK collateral system is "interesting," but the 1% fee plus slippage makes arbitrage nearly impossible. Another user on CryptoSlate said they got stuck trying to redeem TRUNK for BUSD - and got no support for three days.

A lone investor hesitates before a failing Elephant Money dApp with fee claws and melting stablecoins.

Who’s using it - and who’s avoiding it

There are three types of people involved with Elephant Money:

  • Early adopters who bought in 2021-2022 when hype was high. Most are underwater and holding, hoping for a rebound that never comes.
  • Yield farmers looking for high APYs on staking. They’re chasing returns, but the rewards are tiny because the token price is so low. Even if you earn 50% APY on ELEPHANT, you’re still earning pennies.
  • Speculators who buy when the price spikes 5-10% for a day, then sell. These are the only ones making money - and they’re leaving quickly.
Most people who try to use the protocol get lost. The website has a sleek dark theme, but no clear guides. One Reddit user spent two hours trying to figure out how to mint TRUNK before finding a 2022 YouTube video. No official walkthroughs. No customer support. Just a dApp and a prayer.

Why Elephant Money is falling behind

The DeFi space moved on. MakerDAO’s DAI is backed by billions in collateral. Yearn Finance aggregates yields across dozens of protocols. Aave and Compound lend real money. Elephant Money? It’s stuck in a loop of its own design.

It competes with projects that have:

  • Real user growth
  • Clear value propositions
  • Low friction
  • Strong communities
Elephant Money has none of those. Its market cap is 0.00048% of the entire DeFi ecosystem. Its trading volume is a fraction of what top projects see in an hour. Even on BNB Chain - where it’s built - it’s invisible.

And now, regulators are watching stablecoins. The EU’s MiCA rules could force TRUNK to prove its collateral is safe and liquid. If BUSD ever faces restrictions, TRUNK’s value could collapse overnight. There’s no backup plan.

A ghostly elephant fades away beside an empty wallet filled with worthless tokens and discarded guides.

Should you invest in ELEPHANT?

No - if you’re looking for growth, safety, or returns.

Maybe - if you’re speculating on a lottery ticket. The price could spike 50% tomorrow. But it could also drop another 80%. There’s no fundamental reason to believe it will recover. No team updates. No new features. No marketing. Just a token with a broken model and a fading community.

The only real use case for ELEPHANT right now is as a placeholder in a wallet - not as an investment.

How to interact with Elephant Money (if you must)

If you still want to try it, here’s what you need:

  1. Install MetaMask or another Web3 wallet.
  2. Add the BNB Smart Chain network (RPC: https://bsc-dataseed.binance.org/).
  3. Buy BNB to pay for gas.
  4. Go to the official Elephant Money dApp (double-check the URL - scams are common).
  5. Connect your wallet.
  6. Choose: stake ELEPHANT, mint TRUNK, or add liquidity to ELEPHANT/BUSD on PancakeSwap.
But know this: every transaction will cost you. The 10% fee on transfers. The 1% fee on TRUNK. Slippage from low liquidity. And if something goes wrong? No one will help you.

Final reality check

Elephant Money sounds like a bank. But it doesn’t act like one. It doesn’t serve users. It doesn’t grow. It doesn’t innovate. It’s a ghost of a DeFi experiment that never caught on.

It’s not a scam. The code works. The audits are real. But it’s a project that was built on hype, not demand. And in crypto, hype fades fast.

If you’re looking for a crypto that could actually grow in 2026, look elsewhere. Elephant Money isn’t the future of finance. It’s a cautionary tale of how not to build a token.