Clone tokens and falling demand: what the audit of cryptocurrency financing for the Cockroach protests in India revealed
Rumors are actively circulating online that the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protest movement in India is generously funded from abroad using cryptocurrencies. However, a thorough analysis of public data conducted by me paints a completely different picture. Contrary to loud claims, no traces of organized mass fundraising in cryptocurrency were found.
Declining interest in cryptocurrencies amid rising protest activity
Logic suggests that if protesters were massively buying cryptocurrency to fund actions, we would see a surge in search queries and trading volumes. The reality turned out to be the opposite. From July 18 to 22, during the peak of the protests, the number of search queries related to CJP soared by 1,350% across India and by more than 2,000% in Delhi. However, during the same period, queries for buying cryptocurrency, USDT, and crypto wallets fell by approximately 18% nationwide and by 19% in the capital.
Data from the largest Indian exchanges, CoinDCX and WazirX, confirms this trend. The turnover of the USDT/INR pair dropped by 30% compared to the baseline. The median premium of USDT to the official dollar rate, a key indicator of panic demand, decreased by 44%. This indicates not an inflow, but an outflow of liquidity and a decline in interest in stablecoins among Indian traders.
One-day tokens: speculation, not fundraising
The only noticeable crypto activity related to the protests was the trading of four unofficial tokens on the Solana blockchain. The largest of them, named after CJP, traded on decentralized exchanges for a total of about $1.48 million. However, analysis of the token distribution shows that more than 80% of the supply was concentrated in the hands of a single holder, and the top 10 addresses controlled virtually the entire volume. This is a classic sign of a pump-and-dump scheme, not a tool for real fundraising. Protest organizers did not confirm any connection to these tokens, and their creators remain undisclosed.
Verdict: accusations are not supported by on-chain data
My analysis covered public data from May 15 to July 22, including Google Trends, on-chain stablecoin transactions on Dune Analytics exchange clusters, 118 messages in related Telegram channels, and activity on X. None of these sources found evidence of a massive inflow of cryptocurrency from abroad, transfers to organizers, or public wallets for collecting donations.
Undoubtedly, private P2P transfers or transactions through anonymous wallets remain outside the visibility of public blockchain audits. However, at this point, there is not a single publicly presented piece of evidence—no bank statement, exchange log, or financial intelligence report—that would confirm the thesis of large-scale foreign crypto financing of the protests.
Expert opinion: The CJP story is a vivid example of how cryptocurrencies become a convenient scapegoat in political narratives. The absence of evidence in the public chain does not equal proof of the absence of funding, but in this case, all available metrics point to the opposite: demand for crypto was falling, and the only activity was speculative. While a court in Delhi is considering the lawsuit, there are simply no grounds for accusations against the crypto industry.