- Atari is distancing itself from the PONG cryptocurrency, accusing the token of using its trademarked property without permission.
Atari is distancing itself from a cryptocurrency whose name could appeal to old-school gamers, saying it has no affiliation with the token.
The video game company says the RealPongCoin, which trades under PONG, was made without its consent or approval—and that the founders are using Pong, which is an Atari registered trademark, without permission.
Legal action could be forthcoming, the company warned.
“Atari is warning the public that RealPongCoin risks deceiving consumers by suggesting an affiliation with Atari, and that Atari’s legal team is actively reviewing measures to stop the misuse of its intellectual property,” it said in a statement.
The Pong crypto has hardly caught fire with investors. It’s trading for well below a penny per token, pricing at $0.000875 per coin in early trading Friday. The market cap of the token is unavailable, but CoinMarketCap reports that the token currently has just 507 holders. Total trading volume in the past 24 hours is less than $5.
The token is seemingly tied to a multiplayer blockchain game called Pong Heroes, which takes its inspiration from the groundbreaking 1972 Atari classic. That Estonia-based game was created in 2022 and features NFT characters who compete to earn PONG tokens.
The strangest thing about Atari’s statement, which puts renewed focus on the PONG token, is that the game (and the token) made their debut several years ago—and in 2023, the founders posted on X that the project “has now gone down south” and asked if anyone was still paying attention to it.
The founders haven’t posted since Oct. 29 of that year.
Atari’s interest in the PONG token comes as cryptocurrencies have become red-hot under the Trump administration. Memecoins, in particular, have been catching people’s attention as Trump, his wife Melania, and even the pastor who led the benediction at Trump’s inauguration ceremony have all launched tokens in the past few weeks.