On the eve of his inauguration as the US President, Trump did a great job for the American people and the world. In the last two days before the US Constitutions salary regulations took effect on him, the Trump family made tens of billions of dollars from the cryptocurrency circle through MEME coins.
The President of the United States takes the lead in issuing a coin is definitely an unprecedented event. The popularity and wealth-creating effect of the $TRUMP token are also unique. In just one weekend, its daily trading volume on the Binance platform exceeded 10 billion US dollars, even surpassing BTC at one point. From financial institutions on Wall Street to grandpas and aunts on the Bund, the whole world is asking how to rush into this feast.
Interestingly, this American MEME coin with a good background has made Chinese young people who trade in coins one of the largest profit-making groups. Since the token was issued at night in the Eastern Time of the United States, most American citizens were unable to seize this trading opportunity in the first place. According to statistics from on-chain data and social media information, half of the more than 100 addresses that made profits of more than one million US dollars are from the Chinese community. At the same time, due to disputes over laws and regulations and differences of opinion, Trumps sassy operation has also caused serious differences in the crypto community.
Review of coin issuance history
On January 18, the incoming US President Trump posted on his social account, announcing the launch of his personal meme coin $TRUMP. Users can obtain the meme token by entering the official website. The website shows that TRUMP is the only official Trump meme coin.
The gettrumpmemes official website shows that 80% of the supply of TRUMP coins is held by CIC Digital, an affiliate of the Trump Group, and Fight Fight Fight LLC, an entity jointly owned by CIC. The official website also stated that the initial issuance of TRUMP coins on the first day was 200 million, and the expected issuance volume within three years will reach 1 billion, which will be gradually increased over three years. CIC Digital and its affiliates will receive the income generated by TRUMP trading activities, which will be locked for 3-12 months and unlocked within the next 24 months.
At first, the market still had doubts about the news, speculating that Trumps account might have been stolen, but a few hours later, the article still existed and there was no rumor refutation, and the TRUMP coin rose rapidly all the way. 12 hours after the token was issued, its trading price reached about US$30, and the FDV was as high as US$30 billion. As of 8 pm Beijing time on January 19, according to CoinMarketCap data, the price of the TRUMP coin had risen to a maximum of US$85.2 within a day and a half of the coin issuance, and the full circulation market value was as high as US$85.2 billion. Trumps net worth has soared by US$68.16 billion (approximately RMB 498.93 billion), which is more than 10 times higher than his net worth before the coin was issued. On the 19th, Binance, Coinbase, and OKX also announced the launch of TRUMP (OFFICIAL TRUMP) spot trading. Except for the surge in Trump and Sol used to buy Trump, all other tokens plummeted. The price of ETH fell to as low as $3,127, a 12% drop from the early morning of the 18th. Other meme tokens, AI agent tokens, etc. all fell to varying degrees.
Image source: CoinMarketCap
When $Trump was at its peak and extremely popular, Trumps wife Melania also took the opportunity to launch her own cryptocurrency MELANIA on the Solana chain. On the 20th, Melania posted on social media that Melanias official Meme is online and attached a purchase link.
The Trump familys follow-up coin issuance seems to have dealt a heavy blow to the market. Except for MELANIA, which has risen to a market value of $12 billion driven by fomo sentiment, all other coins have fallen across the board. TRUMPs market value has been halved from $76 billion to $35 billion, SOL has fallen directly from $297 to $235, and Bitcoin has fallen by 6% in a short period of time. The crypto community angrily claimed that the Trump family used cryptocurrency as their familys cash machine, blurring the line between the role of the government and commercial interests, and nakedly using the presidents international influence to make profits for themselves. Many media have questioned the Trump familys coin issuance and opposed and denounced this money-making behavior.
While being anesthetized, they take over the market: Asian young people who get rich by speculating in cryptocurrencies VS American retail investors who pay for their beliefs
Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of Chinas Global Times, tweeted in comment on Trumps coin issuance, saying: Capitalism! It turns out that the presidency can be monetized in this way! Mr. Trump really opened my eyes as someone who lives in a socialist country. But perhaps what opened the eyes of this former professional media person even more was that in addition to the insider trading of the Presidents coin issuance, the people who made the most money were Asian on-chain traders.
The following figure is a TRUMP trading trend chart based on Eastern Time. The coin was issued at 9 pm on Friday, January 17, which is 10 am on Saturday, Beijing time. As can be seen from the figure, the sharp price increases from January 18 to 19 were concentrated in the Asian trading hours.
TRUMP trading chart in New York time
On January 18, one hour after TRUMP issued its coin and its market value just exceeded 100 million US dollars, the community counted the top profitable addresses of TRUMP and found that 10 Chinese KOLs had made profits of more than 1 million US dollars.
Image source: Lianzhi
When the market value of TRUMP rose to $15 billion, just 4 hours after the token was issued, Chinese KOL 0x Sun announced his own TRUMP PnL on X, with a total cost of 3010 SOL and a profit of $10 million. One day later, the last PnL update before 0x Sun transferred TRUMP to CEX showed that he had made a profit of $27.5 million.
It was 4 hours, and I have been living on the chain since I entered the circle 3 years ago, sitting there for more than 10 hours a day, 0x Sun wrote in a tweet. When the market value of TRUMP soared to over $30 billion, in addition to being surprised and lamenting that they did not get the bottom chips, some people in the Chinese community reflected on why they did not seize this opportunity. Christian, the founder of 0x infini, gave the answer. He believed that if you do not have a certain amount of principal on the Solana chain and all in at the first time, you will not be able to get big results on TRUMP.
In contrast, the performance of American retail investors appears to be more passive. There are far fewer public profit-taking orders on Trumps coin issuance in the English community, and even the top meme KOL Ansem left the market with a loss.
The address marked as Ansem purchased TRUMP on the morning of January 19th, Beijing time, when the market value of TRUMP had exceeded 30 billion US dollars. At that time, the US crypto trading platform Kraken had just launched TRUMP spot trading. On January 20th, around the time Robinhood announced the launch of TRUMP, Ansem increased his position and bought TRUMP. On January 21st, Ansem sold all TRUMP at a loss, and the total loss was controlled within 80,000 US dollars.
US YouTuber voidzilla directly cursed in the video, This behavior is unprecedented in terms of stupidity and fraud. Using the few days before the presidents inauguration to promote a hype project is simply jaw-dropping. With only two days left before the inauguration, he should have been busy writing his inaugural speech instead of issuing meme coins. At the critical moment of the presidential campaign, using power to hype up this kind of thing not only makes history, but is also a blatant trampling of all moral bottom lines.
However, the presidents reputation is still attractive to retail investors. On January 18 alone, Moonshot added about 400,000 new users. Twitter is full of posts about how to use Moonshot to buy TRUMP, and some users even complain about its complexity. In a discussion about purchase methods, someone recommended using the Phantom wallet, and another user replied, I just want to save some cash or dollars, but it forced me to buy SOL, Bitcoin, etc.
And because U.S. banks were unable to conduct large-denomination certificates of deposit or fund transfer business over the weekend, U.S. investors profits on TRUMP were further limited. The delay in capital flow caused U.S. retail investors to miss the key entry time window and become liquidity providers in the later stage of the currency price increase.
On the one hand, Asian traders who are resident on the chain discovered the target at the right time and entered the market with heavy positions; on the other hand, the American cryptocurrency trading community has compliant Moonshot purchase channels and their admiration for national leaders makes them ignore early chips and are willing to become the exit liquidity of the president and large investors.
How Much Money Did the Trump Family Make from the Crypto Market?
After Trumps wife Melania released the coin of the same name, the price of $Trump also fell from $78 to $35. With the news of RobinHOODs launch of $Trump, the price has risen again. In the past few days, the news has been coordinated with the market making. We have to sigh at the horror of the capital conspiracy group behind it. They have coordinated resources to use each exit liquidity to the extreme without making any noise. This is not the first time that the Trump team has made money in the blockchain, but it is the most sensational one. So how much money did the Trump team make in the field of cryptocurrency?
Cryptocurrency political donations
As the first president to accept political donations in cryptocurrency, he unprecedentedly accepted not only BTC but also mainstream altcoins such as ETH and SOL on his official website, as well as Memecoin such as Dogecoin. In the end, the value of cryptocurrencies received exceeded US$4 million, and he also received millions of dollars in traditional investments from industry supporters in the crypto field.
Making $20 million on NFTs is just a test run
In December 2022, Trump announced the launch of the first set of Trump-themed NFTs. These trading cards offer Trump in various roles, with a total of 45,000 cards and a price of $99. Within 24 hours, the NFTs were sold out, directly bringing Trump $4.5 million. This also made Trump, who was not pro-cryptocurrency at the time, taste the sweetness. For similar products like this, the Trump team has released four series on Polygon, one of which is a rare special edition, and a series on Bitcoin. The sale of nearly 200,000 Trump trading card NFTs and royalties have brought the Trump team more than $20 million in revenue.
The key driver behind this series is CIC Digital LLC, which was founded in 2021 by Trumps lawyer John Marion and former adviser Nick Luna. NFT INT LLC, the issuer of Trump Digital Trading Cards, stated on its website that it is an independent entity and that NFT INT LLC is not owned, managed or controlled by Donald J. Trump, but produced and sold the NFT series by purchasing Trumps name and portrait license from CIC Digital LLC. But suspiciously, further investigation of NFT INT LLC revealed that the contact address provided on its official website is located at a UPS store in Park City, Utah, USA. However, the registered address is in Cheyenne, the capital of Wyoming, the Little Cayman Islands of the United States, about 480 kilometers from Park City, which means that this company is likely to be one of the ghost companies.
Trumps NFT increased 10 times in 2 days. Was it issued by the former president himself?
Targeted search for DeFi leeks, $300 million is not enough to fill the gaps
World Liberty Fi was jointly initiated by President Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. Donald Trump Jr. once emphasized that this is not a simple Memecoin, but a top-level financial and banking tool dedicated to providing decentralization, while strictly following relevant regulations to ensure the safety of users. Interestingly, with the popularity of $Trump Memecoin released by Trump, the 20 billion tokens sold by the Trump familys DeFi project World Liberty Financial (WLFI) were sold out this morning, with a unit price of $0.015 and a total of $300 million raised. Justin Sun, the boss of the well-known chain Tron, contributed $30 million alone and announced an additional investment of $45 million in the name of Tron DAO.
As the original 20% of the public sale quota was sold out, WLFI generously opened up an additional 5% quota for community purchase. If it is filled up again, the on-chain address with a value of US$300 million can add another US$75 million.
It is worth noting that two days before the release of $Trump, WLFI suddenly reduced the 17,000 Ethereums that had been hoarded on the address for nearly a few months to 1,200 transferred to Coinbase or other addresses. After $Trump sucked a lot of blood from all on-chain assets and a large number of ETH big holders switched to Solana, it began to purchase Ethereum in multiple transactions on the 19th. The current position has exceeded 42,000 Ethereum, making a good wave that turned Ethereums income from loss to profit, and also made Ethereum exceed one-third of the total assets of the address.
The ultimate killer, an unprecedented large-scale Crypto consolidation scene
This should be the most repeated picture you have seen in recent days. The US President issued Memecoin. This is something that is impossible to happen, but it can be rationalized for Trump. The fact is that the Trump family has worked hard for three generations and finally accumulated 4 billion family wealth. After the release of Memecoin, the market value reached 80 billion US dollars within two days. More than 100 years of struggle cannot match the global carnival in 2 days. $Trumps peak FDV of 80 billion US dollars, based on 20% of the circulating market value, has an actual market value of 16 billion US dollars, but now the actual market value is only 6 billion US dollars. Most of the 10 billion US dollars of liquidity in the middle of the blood-sucking market has disappeared in the market. Regardless of the market increase that the influence of the US President can bring, the short-term impact of a single token on this average market of 100 billion to 200 billion US dollars is huge.
The companies under the Trump family responsible for the issuance of $Trump this time, in addition to the CIC Digital LLC responsible for Trump mentioned above, the main body is Fight Fight Fight LLC. These two companies hold 80% of the $Trump token quota. Although the total unlocking time is 3 years, the unlocking mode is divided into six parts. The largest part 40% of the shares can be unlocked in the third month. Although we have no way of knowing how much inside traders will benefit besides this 80%, from the launch of Coinbase to Robinhood, and Moonshots announcement that it can be directly used from Robinhood deposits, $Trump should use Trumps supporters and the funds of the traditional stock market as well as a large number of new leeks to maintain the popularity and market value for quite a while. So if 4% of the chips are unlocked after 3 months
Even if the market value is half of what it is now, it will still be able to obtain billions of dollars in exit liquidity.
The token $MELANIA of Trumps wife, the First Lady of the United States, is the same as the token issued by Trump and has nothing to do with Trump himself. The token is issued by MKT World, LLC. According to the company information found online , Melanias position in the company is both a member and a manager, and the company address 3505 SUMMIT BLVD. WEST PALM BEACH, FL 33406 is very close to Mrs. Trumps home address in Florida.
The token economic model of $MELANIA is not quite the same as that of $TRUMP. The team shares are 35%, the treasury 20%, the community 20%, the public offering 15%, and the liquidity 10%. The biggest difference is the token unlocking rules. The team shares of TRUMP need to be locked for 3 years, but the MELANIA team only needs to be fully locked for 30 days. Starting from the 30th day, the team shares will be unlocked by 10% first, and then gradually unlocked linearly in the 2nd to 13th months until the 13th month. This short-term and unclear chip allocation also caused the token market value to drop rapidly from $15 billion to $3.3 billion without looking back, which is almost only 20% of the high point. Such a sloppy token unlocking rule and a token that fell rapidly in a short period of time are really like a dog coin. It is inevitable to wonder whether this is just a means of getting $Trump back to the regulatory plate.
In any case, the Trump team retained a bit of rationality in making money before these few days, but Trumps actions in the past few days are astonishing. No matter how many disclaimers or legal loopholes are used, it is an indisputable fact that the US president made Crime Great Again before Making America Great Again.
Pro-Trump crypto group starts cursing, is the Trump crypto faction also split?
In fact, not everyone supports Trump’s direct coin issuance. Previously, Trump’s team made $20 million from issuing NFTs, which was relatively “mild”, and many community members have not yet reacted.
But the nature of today is completely different. In order to circumvent the presidential investment restrictions, on the eve of taking office, the Trumps directly issued coins, locked positions, and bought in early and sold at high points, allowing the entire interest group behind them to realize profit without investment at the fastest speed.
There can be many people who reap the benefits in the cryptocurrency world, but the president cannot be one of them. Many people have expressed strong concerns about this.
Trump owning 80% of TrumpCoin and scheduling the launch just days before the inauguration is undoubtedly a predatory act that could harm many people, venture capitalist Nick Tomaino wrote on the X platform.
Anthony Scaramucci, a banker who briefly served as White House communications director during Trumps last term (he was fired after 10 days in office), also criticized on the X platform: Trump meme coin is harmful to the cryptocurrency industry. We cant fool ourselves.
Image source: community
What is even more embarrassing is the cryptocurrency circle. We donated political donations one after another, we shouted Fire Gary Gensler, we longed for a pro-crypto president, and we hoped that the crypto industry could get more attention and more liquidity.
Has it been achieved? Yes. According to community and trading platform staff, a well-known trading platform usually has only a few hundred registered users and an OTC transaction amount of $700,000, but on January 20, the number of registered users reached 120,000 and the OTC amount reached $100 million. The number of new user registrations on a leading trading platform also exceeded millions in three days.
But the way to achieve this is not to use Bitcoin as a national strategic reserve of the United States, not to have a new batch of mainstream currencies pass the ETF, not to establish a new encryption bill, but to issue meme coins to absorb most of the liquidity in the currency circle.
Image source: WeChat community
It is not decent or moral. Many people in the cryptocurrency circle who once supported Trump have now publicly expressed their opposition.
Its absolutely ridiculous for him to do this. Nic Carter, founding partner of cryptocurrency investment firm Castle Island Ventures, has publicly admitted to being a Trump fan, but he still said: They launched the meme coin to explore how stupid this can be.
Even during the election, the pro-Trump crypto media Bitcoin Magazine stated on social media that TRUMP is a shitcoin.
Bitcoin Magazine has played a vital role in marketing Trump as the first Bitcoin president of the United States. At the official Bitcoin 2024 conference hosted by Bitcoin Magazine, Trump personally gave a speech and announced the launch of a strategic Bitcoin reserve to ensure that the United States will become the worlds crypto center and a Bitcoin superpower. He also plans to fire the chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Trumps crypto-friendly policies all started with this speech.
In my opinion, this is nothing more than a self-profiteering scam of pump and dump, which is an unethical behavior, and the investors (or fans) who participated in it are extremely stupid. However, now the authors of Bitcoin Magazine are outspoken in their criticism. Related reading: Bitcoin Magazine slams $TRUMP: Trump likes cryptocurrency as long as it can be used to make money
The medias values are top-down. Although David Bailey, CEO of Bitcoin Magazine, was previously a Trump campaign adviser, he is said to be one of the people in the pro-Trump crypto group who tried to dissuade Trump from issuing currency.
He has repeatedly clarified on social media that I have nothing to do with Trumps memecoin, no prior notice, and no financial interest, and My suggestions and advocacy are beneficial to Bitcoin and the country.
As a crypto consultant during the campaign, David Bailey is now positioned more like a lubricant between Trump and the community. Even though he does not agree with Trumps currency plan, he still tries his best to appease the community: I am very grateful for everything Trump has done and will do for Bitcoin and the entire industry, Ross will be released and a series of events will be realized, I will continue to do my best to support the president and his familys acceptance of Bitcoin and provide honest advice when needed...
This also means that the crypto people around Trump are now divided into two factions ideologically.
Bitcoin Magazine is one faction, and the other faction standing opposite Bitcoin Magazine is what is commonly known as the Crypto Committee, whose members are all appointed by Trump himself.
David Sacks, the chairman of the Crypto Committee, is well known as one of the founders of PayPal. He later became famous by creating Yammer and selling it to Microsoft for $1.2 billion. In the cryptocurrency circle, David Sacks most important identity is an investor in the crypto venture capital firm Multicoin and a Solana maximalist.
One of the stupidest attacks against me this year was that I sold SOL tokens to retail investors. If that were true, they would have made a fortune by now. Congratulations to everyone who holds SOL. Even when FTX collapsed, Sacks never sold SOL.
Because $TRUMP is deployed on the solana chain, and David Sacks remained silent about these zero-sum meme coins when Trump issued $TRUMP coins, many people believe that the chairman of the crypto committee must be involved.
Another piece of evidence is that David Sacks has a criminal record. In March 2024, David Sacks posted a post about the memecoin $Sacks with his own name.
Although he tweeted nine times when people started buying to tell them not to buy, this has established the evidence that he had issued coins before, which is exactly the same as the method of issuing $TRUMP coins. (According to feedback from community members, David Sacks recently deleted his posts about $Sacks.)
Image source: community
This made many people dislike David Sacks, who felt that his methods were too quick to achieve success and too eager to seek benefits through such radical means. Even if Sacks was not directly involved, as the chairman of the Cryptography Committee, he should be held responsible for the incident. There are even rumors that someone proposed that the entire leadership team of David Sacks Cryptography Committee should be replaced with a new team.
According to an anonymous Washington cryptocurrency lobbyist, almost everyone in the crypto space is vying for a seat on the committee. Many crypto giants, including a16z, Coinbase, Paradigm, Ripple, Kraken and Circle, are very interested in seeking a say in U.S. crypto policy reforms.
After all, the seats of ordinary members of the encryption committee are all hot cakes, and David Sacks words and deeds as the chairman of the committee are even more crucial.
This is not the first time that Trumps team has shown instability. During his last presidential term, there were huge conflicts and changes among different factions within the Trump administration, and staff resignations were commonplace.
During this term, in addition to the competition for seats on the Cryptography Committee, the internal political risks of the Trump team are also reflected in other aspects.
Although no names were mentioned, Messari founder Ryan Selkis tweeted to call on Trump to fire those who recommended launching the $MELANIA project. The project team lacks professional capabilities, may cause significant economic losses and damage to reputation, and the project decision did not fully consider Trumps interests. Selkis pointed out the problems of $MELANIA.
Compared to $TRUMP, the release of $MELANIA, issued by Trump’s wife Melania, was indeed more hasty. The front-end code was incomplete, the images were not compressed, the website was built only one day before the project was released, and the legal text was not rigorous. Many netizens speculated that $MELANIA and $TRUMP had many differences in their methods and might not be operated by the same team.
“If my sources are correct, $TRUMP was promoted by the crypto czar, and $MELANIA was made by the worldliberty team. But what is certain is that these two coins were not made by the same team.” More than one community member revealed this.
How long does it take for trust to be consumed?
TRUMP was born at the time when Trump was about to take office. It was originally a shocking thing for the whole world and excited the cryptocurrency circle. We have always expected that cryptocurrency can show a more compliant, stable and secure image to more mainstream people around the world. With such a desire, $TRUMP carries too many expectations in the cryptocurrency circle. It comes from the hands of the incoming US president. Who cant imagine that this is the beginning of the new US governments further embrace of cryptocurrency? How much new attention can this beginning attract to cryptocurrency with a historical positive image?
TRUMP was created by Trump, but unfortunately, it was not created by US President Trump, but by businessman Trump. US President Trump is fully capable of issuing and promoting the development of $TRUMP and even the entire cryptocurrency market with higher moral standards and more complete legal compliance standards, but businessman Trump showed naked greed and disregard for morality. He completely used the cryptocurrency market as a cash machine to cash in his influence, and couldnt wait to issue one asset after another to grab more profits.
In the final analysis, Trump only talks about the cryptocurrency industry for votes. Has he really considered how to better promote the development of this industry? What we see is a big man who is completely self-centered, has no regard for basic industry rules and ethics, and puts himself above the entire crypto market. In Trumps eyes, the cryptocurrency market may be no different from setting up a stall at his doorstep. As long as someone is willing to pay for his influence, he thinks there is nothing wrong with his behavior.
The issuance of coins by Trumps wife Melania has become a helpless self-mockery in the cryptocurrency circle - Trump and his family are laughing at how stupid our unrealistic expectations are.
From the perspective of speculators, this is certainly a speculative boom, and there is no more perfect narrative and sense of push than this. But is it really good for the industry?
What Trump will lose is not only the trust of the cryptocurrency community in him, but also the morality and responsibility of an American president.
