As Canadians recommitted to supporting the local economy in the face of a mounting trade war with the United States, social media users spread a video of Prime Minister Mark Carney supposedly promoting investment in a cryptocurrency tied to the country’s freshwater reserves. But the clip of Carney is manipulated — he never made such an endorsement — and experts said tying the coin to online attention makes the investment highly volatile.
“Canada will become richer than America by 2030 due to our freshwater and we are committing every dollar of it to the World Water Reserve,” Carney appears to say in an August 24, 2026 Facebook reel. “And the rest of the world can get in by visiting wwr.global.”
For the rest of the clip, another speaker superimposes himself over the video and encourages viewers to head to the site supposedly mentioned by the Canadian prime minister to quickly make an investment.
Several other videos in the same style spread across Facebook and TikTok, with different users encouraging others to invest in the freshwater cryptocurrency allegedly promoted by Carney.
Screenshot of a Facebook post taken September 1, 2026
Screenshot of a Facebook pos taken September 1, 2026
Canada walked away from negotiations with the United States on August 21, launching the two countries into a new stage of their trade war.
The escalating trade conflict with the United States is stirring a wave of patriotism in Canada, with many residents boycotting American goods.
While navigating the economic tensions with the United States, Carney has flexed his financial credentials as the former governor of the banks of Canada and England. But he is not promoting a cryptocurrency backed by freshwater reserves.
Reverse image searches of the clip lead to his August 22 speech explaining why Canada suspended trade talks with the United States (archived here). In the footage, Carney is wearing the same dark suit and tie with his Order of Canada pin while speaking at a wooden podium in front of a row of Canadian flags.
Screenshot of a YouTube video taken September 3, 2026 with highlights added by AFP
Screenshot of a Facebook post taken September 1, 2026 with highlights added by AFP
The speech attributed to the prime minister in the social media posts appears to be completely invented. The real declaration does not include mentions of “freshwater reserves” or “wwr.global,” indicating the video attached to cryptocurrency promotions is a deepfake appropriating Carney’s persona (archived here).
AFP found several other videos similarly promoting “wwr.global” with deepfakes of public figures, such as American investor Warren Buffet, US President Donald Trump and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Fact-checking organization Full Fact recently debunked similar clips using footage of American businessman Bill Gates to advertise a separate water reserve linked-coin. In July, AFP had found that coin touted in videos using altered footage of football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo.
Memecoin promotion
A Whois search of registered websites reveals that ” wwr.global” was created recently on August 6 (archived here).
Hubert Pun, a professor of management science at Western University’s Ivey Business School (archived here), said that with the videos of Carney in particular, influencers appeared to be pushing a ” memecoin” by hyping up a crypto investment and tying it to a trending topic (archived here).
“Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and also Ether itself are already really volatile, memecoin actually pushes it to an even higher level,” Pun said.
He said this extra volatility comes from memecoins’ connection to online attention to a topic. For example, the value of the $TRUMP coin has declined drastically since its initial launch after the US president’s second inauguration in 2025.
He recommended avoiding investing anywhere besides large crypto exchanges, such as Coinbase, since smaller sites run the risk of being scams.
Coinbase lists World Water Reserve Price (WWR) and United States Water Reserve Price (USWR) on its website as “unreviewed” assets, which means the currencies have not gone through legal and technical compliance evaluations (archive here, here and here).
WWR was generally increasing in value at the time of publication on September 4, 2026 but the price of USWR — advertised in June — had already peaked before cratering at the end of July.
AFP has debunked other appropriations of public figures’ identities to promote income schemes here, here, here and here.