The official Trump meme coin is currently hovering around $16.50 — a far cry from its $75 peak. Whether insiders cashed in or traders got rugged, one thing is certain: President Donald Trump reportedly made a killing.
According to the New York Times, the Trump family and various partners raked in nearly $100 million in trading fees. And guess what? Most of that hasn’t even been cashed out yet.
Recall how Trump launched the coin just three days before taking office, seemingly indicating that a new revenue stream was among his presidential priorities.
Make-America-Great-Again supporters embraced it. At the very least, it was another way for Trump to monetize the MAGA brand — just like he had done with hats, NFTs, a DeFi platform, sneakers and bibles.
After all, meme coins — of which the total market cap hovers $100 billion — operate in a free-for-all market where many investors, or insiders, drive up prices before bailing, leaving latecomers with zilch.
Famous people (i.e. Hawk Tuah Girl and Andrew Tate) who attached themselves to these coin launches are often scrutinized for this type of activity. The Trump family is no different. However, the president’s endorsement of an “Official Trump” token attracted a lot of first-time crypto buyers, as reported by Axios. And Trump, as president, is in a position to change regulatory oversight around cryptocurrency in a way that he sees fit.
Trump’s critics understandably called it a conflict of interest, but the ones really feeling the pain are Trump’s own supporters.
Take Shawn M. Whitson, a small business owner from North Carolina. On Inauguration Day, he was stoked: “Today, we take our country back!” he posted, celebrating both Trump and his $TRUMP investment. Fast-forward a few weeks, and reality set in. “Done with this $TRUMP crap,” he declared, calling it “a joke.”
Some of the most prominent voices in the crypto community, including SkyBridge founder Anthony Scaramucci and Stephen Findeisen (aka Coffeezilla), almost immediately called Trump out for what they perceived to be a classic pump-and-dump grift: Big players buy-in, hype it up, then cash out—leaving smaller investors in financial ruin.
There’s currently no hard evidence that Trump or his associates manipulated the price of Official Trump.
However, the Times shared data from Nansen, as well as Chainalysis and researcher Molly White, who pointed to at least one account that purchased $1,096,109 million in $TRUMP three hours before Trump launched the coin.
The anonymous account jettisoned the coins, making a $50 million profit, said Nansen analyst Aurelie Barthere.
Later sales increased their profits to $109 million, White told the Times.
And another trader who began buying $TRUMP just two minutes after it was launched, netted $2.7 million.
For those keeping score: 700,000 wallets raked in gains on the Trump token. The real winners? 31 early traders who collected $669 million in profits in just days.
But where there are winners, there are… well, 813,294 not-so-lucky wallets. In the first 19 days of trading, these folks either cashed out at a loss or held onto their coins as they nosedived. Collectively, they’re sitting on a $2 billion punch to the gut, considering how far the coin plummeted in value.
The Trump family isn’t letting the meme coin backlash derail other business ventures it has in the works. They recently unveiled TruthFi, an investment platform that aims to be “a competitive alternative to woke funds.”
