Authenticating guest/anonymous users using JWT - angularjs

Question

I'm building an SPA that a user can upload some files. The front-end is written in AngularJS while the back-end is using an API in Laravel 5.7. The authentication is implemented using the jwt-auth library.
So far I have implemented this for registered users where each user has a personal directory on the server where he/she uploads the files. The difference between the registered and the anonymous users is that the files of the anonymous will be deleted after a while.
Now, I want to do the same for anonymous/guest users (if the press the button continue as a guest). So what I tried first in the authContrroller.php side is to use something like this:
public function authentication(Request $rrequest) {
$credentials = $request->only('email', 'password');
// Guest authentication
if( $credentials['email'] === 'guest' && $credentials['password'] === 'guest' )
{
$payload = auth()->factory()->claims(['sub' => $this->createRandomDir()])->make();
$token = auth()->manager()->encode($payload);
// OR
$factory = JWTFactory::customClaims([
'sub' => $this->createRandomDir(),
]);
$payload = $factory->make();
$token = JWTAuth::encode($payload);
}
// Registered user authentication authentication
else
{
if (! $token = auth()->setTTL(60)->attempt($credentials))
return response()->json(['error' => 'invalid_credentials'], 400);
}
return response()->json(compact('token'));
}
The idea was to create a random directory and enclose it inside the payload and use it on the next requests.
But in the case of the guest, the server returns as a token an empty object. Possibly because there wasn't a user in the DB.
Another idea that I'm thinking of is to create a random user (add it to the DB) and assign to it a random directory each time a user needs to use the app as guest/anonymous. The only thing that I'm afraid on that approach is that if there are thousands of guests then thousands random users should be created on the DB.
So what do you think? Is there any other and more efficient way to handle this?
Any idea is welcomed.