On the eve of his inauguration as the US President, Trump made a big move for the American people and the world. In the last two days before the US Constitution's salary regulations came into effect on him, the Trump family made tens of billions of dollars from the cryptocurrency circle through MEME coins.
"The US President takes the lead in issuing coins" is definitely an unprecedented event, and the degree of 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, and even surpassed 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 root has made Chinese young people who speculate in coins one of the largest profit groups. Since the token issuance time is at night in the eastern United States, most American citizens did not seize this trading opportunity in the first place. According to on-chain data and social media information statistics, half of the more than 100 addresses with profits exceeding one million US dollars are from the Chinese community. At the same time, due to legal and regulatory disputes and differences of opinion, Trump's "sassy operation" has also caused serious divisions in the crypto community.
On January 18, the incoming US President Trump posted on his social account, announcing the launch of his personal Meme coin $TRUMP, and 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 Trump's account might have been stolen, but a few hours later, the article still existed and there was no rumor refutation, and TRUMP coins rose rapidly all the way. 12 hours after the token was issued, its trading price reached about $30, and the FDV was as high as $30 billion. As of 8 p.m. Beijing time on January 19, according to CoinMarketCap data, the price of TRUMP coins had risen to a maximum of $85.2 within a day and a half of the issuance of the coin, and the total circulation market value was as high as $85.2 billion. Trump's net worth has soared by $68.16 billion (about 498.93 billion yuan), which is more than 10 times higher than before the issuance of the coin. On the 19th, Binance, Coinbase, and OKX also announced the launch of TRUMP (OFFICIAL TRUMP) spot trading. In addition to the surge in Trump and the sol used to buy Trump, all other tokens have been sucked down and 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. have all fallen to varying degrees.
Image source: CoinMarketCap
When $Trump was at its peak and extremely fomo, Trump's 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 "Melania's official Meme is online" and attached a purchase link.
The Trump family's follow-up coin issuance behavior seemed to deal a heavy blow to the market. Except for MELANIA, which rose all the way to a market value of US$120 driven by fomo sentiment, all other coins fell across the board. TRUMP's market value was halved from US$76 billion to US$35 billion, SOL fell directly from US$297 to US$235, and Bitcoin fell by 6% in a short period of time. The crypto community angrily claimed that the Trump family used cryptocurrency as their family's "cash machine", blurring the line between the role of the government and commercial interests, and nakedly using the president's international influence to profit for themselves. Many media have questioned the Trump family's currency issuance behavior, and opposed and denounced this money-making behavior.
Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of China's Global Times, tweeted to comment on Trump's currency issuance, saying: "Capitalism! It turns out that the presidency can be monetized in this way! Mr. Trump really opened my eyes as a person living in a socialist country." But perhaps what opened the eyes of this former professional media person even more was that in addition to the "rat warehouse" issued by the president, the Asian chain traders made the most profit.
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 trend chart in New York time
On January 18, one hour after TRUMP issued the coin and its market value just exceeded 100 million US dollars, the community counted the top profitable addresses of TRUMP, and 10 Chinese KOLs made profits of more than 1 million US dollars.
Image source: Lianzhi
When the market value of TRUMP rose to 15 billion US dollars, just 4 hours after the coin was issued, Chinese KOL 0xSun announced his own TRUMP PnL on X, with a total cost of 3010 SOL and a profit of 10 million US dollars. A day later, 0xSun's last update of PnL before transferring TRUMP to CEX showed that it had made a profit of $27.5 million.
"It was 4 hours, and it was also 3 years ago when I started living on the chain, sitting there for more than 10 hours a day on average," 0xSun wrote in a tweet. When TRUMP's market value 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 were reflecting on why they did not seize this opportunity. Christian, the founder of 0xinfini, gave the answer. He believes that if Solana does not have a certain amount of principal and all in at the first time, it is impossible to get big results on TRUMP.
In contrast, the performance of American retail investors appears to be more passive. In the English community, there are far fewer public profit plates on Trump's coin issuance, and even the top meme KOL Ansem left with a loss.
The address marked as Ansem purchased TRUMP on the morning of January 19, 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 20, around the time Robinhood announced the launch of TRUMP, Ansem increased his position and bought TRUMP. On January 21, Ansem sold all TRUMP at a loss, and the total loss was controlled within 80,000 US dollars.
American YouTuber voidzilla directly cursed in the video, "This behavior is unprecedented in terms of stupidity and fraud. Using the few days before the president's 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 carry out such hype not only refreshes history, but is also a blatant trampling of all moral bottom lines."
The inability of US banks to conduct large-denomination certificates of deposit or fund transfers over the weekend further limited US investors' profits on TRUMP. The delay in capital flow caused US retail investors to miss the key entry time window and become liquidity providers in the later stages of the coin price increase.
On the one hand, Asian traders who are resident on the chain found the target at the right time and entered the market with heavy positions; on the other hand, the American cryptocurrency trading group has a compliant Moonshot purchase channel and worships the national leader, which makes them ignore the early chips and willingly become the exit liquidity of the president and big investors.
After Trump's wife Melania released the eponymous token, the price of $Trump also fell from $78 to $35. With the news of RobinHOOD launching $Trump, the price has risen again. The news in the past few days has cooperated with the market making. I have to sigh at the horror of the capital conspiracy group behind it, and cooperated with resources to use each exit liquidity to the extreme in silence. 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.
As the first president to accept cryptocurrency political donations, 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.
In December 2022, Trump announced the launch of the first set of Trump-themed NFTs. These trading cards provide Trump with various images, 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 released four series on Polygon (including a rare special edition) and a series on Bitcoin. The sale of nearly 200,000 Trump trading card NFTs and royalties brought the Trump team more than $20 million in revenue.
The key driving force behind this series is CIC Digital LLC, which was founded in 2021 by Trump's 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 Trump's name and portrait license from CIC Digital LLC. But further investigation of NFT INT LLC revealed that the contact address provided on its official website was located at a UPS store in Park City, Utah, USA. However, the registered address is in Cheyenne, the capital of Wyoming, "Little Cayman Islands of the United States", about 480 kilometers away from Park City, which means that this company is likely to be one of the ghost companies.
《Trump NFT increased 10 times in 2 days, was it issued by the former president himself? 》
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 family's DeFi project World Liberty Financial (WLFI) were sold out this morning at a unit price of $0.015, raising a total of $300 million, of which 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.
With the original 20% of the public sale quota sold out, WLFI "mercifully" opened an additional 5% quota for the community to purchase. If it is filled again, the on-chain address worth $300 million can add another $75 million.
It is worth noting that two days before the release of $Trump, WLFI suddenly reduced the 17,000 Ethereum that had been hoarded on this address for nearly a few months to 1,200 "transferred to Coinbase or other addresses", and after $Trump sucked a large amount of on-chain assets and a large number of ETH big holders switched to Solana. On the 19th, he started to purchase Ethereum in multiple transactions. His current holdings have exceeded 42,000 Ethereum. He made a "good wave" and turned Ethereum's income from loss into profit. Ethereum also exceeded one-third of the total assets of this address.
The Trump family's companies responsible for the issuance of $Trump this time, in addition to the Trump CIC Digital LLC we mentioned above, are mainly 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 have benefited except for this 80%, from Coinbase to Robinhood With the launch of $Trump and the announcement that Moonshot can be used directly from Robinhood deposits, $Trump should use the funds of Trump supporters and traditional stock markets as well as a large number of new investors to maintain its popularity and market value for quite some time. So if the market value is even half of what it is now when 4% of the chips are unlocked in 3 months, it will still be able to obtain billions of dollars in exit liquidity.
The token $MELANIA, Trump's wife and 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 on the Internet, Melania's 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. Trump's home address in Florida.
The token economic model of $MELANIA is not quite the same as that of $TRUMP. The team share is 35%, the treasury 20%, the community 20%, the public offering 15%, and the liquidity 10%. The biggest difference lies in the token unlocking rules. The team share of TRUMP needs 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 share will be unlocked 10% first, and then gradually unlocked linearly from the 2nd to the 13th month 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, 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 Dogecoin. It is inevitable that people will 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 in the past few days, but Trump’s actions in the past few days have been 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.
In fact, not everyone supports Trump's direct issuance of coins. Previously, Trump's team made 20 million US dollars by issuing NFTs, which was relatively "mild", and many community members have not yet reacted.
But today’s situation 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 at high points in the early stage to sell, allowing the entire interest group behind them to achieve “profit without investment” at the fastest speed.
There can be many people who reap the benefits in the cryptocurrency circle, but the president cannot be the only one. Many people have expressed strong concerns about this.
Venture capitalist Nick Tomaino wrote on the X platform: "Trump holds 80% of Trump coins and schedules the issuance time just a few days before the inauguration. This is undoubtedly a predatory act and many people may be harmed by it."
Banker Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as White House communications director during Trump's last term (he was fired after 10 days in office), also criticized on the X platform: "Trump meme coins are harmful to the cryptocurrency industry. We can't fool ourselves."
What is even more embarrassing is the cryptocurrency community. We donated political donations one after another, we shouted "Fire Gary Gensler", we longed for a pro-cryptocurrency president, and we hoped that the crypto industry could get more attention and more liquidity.
Has it been achieved? It has been achieved. According to community and trading platform staff, a well-known trading platform usually has only a few hundred registered people and an OTC transaction amount of US$700,000, but on January 20, the number of registered people reached 120,000, and the OTC amount reached US$100 million. The number of new user registrations on a certain head trading platform in three days also exceeded millions.
But the way to achieve this is not to use Bitcoin as a national strategic reserve for the United States, not to pass ETFs for a new batch of mainstream currencies, and not to establish a new crypto bill, but to issue meme coins to drain most of the liquidity in the cryptocurrency circle.
It is not decent and moral. Many people in the cryptocurrency circle who once supported Trump have now publicly expressed their opposition.
"It's absolutely ridiculous for him to do this." Nic Carter, founding partner of cryptocurrency investment firm Castle Island Ventures, once publicly admitted that he was 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 the social platform that TRUMP is a shitcoin. You know, Bitcoin Magazine has played an important 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 reserve of Bitcoin to ensure that the United States will become the world's encryption center and Bitcoin superpower. He also plans to fire the chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Trump's crypto-friendly policies all started with this speech.
"In my opinion, this is nothing more than a self-profiteering scam of pumping and dumping. It 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 values of the media are top-down. Although David Bailey, CEO of Bitcoin Magazine, was previously a Trump campaign adviser, he is said to be the person in the pro-Trump encryption group who tried to dissuade Trump from issuing coins.
He has repeatedly clarified on social media that "I have nothing to do with Trump's memecoin, no prior notice, and no financial interests", "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 Trump's currency issuance 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's release and other events will be realized", "I will continue to do my best to support the president and his family's acceptance of Bitcoin and provide honest advice when needed"...
This also means that the crypto people around Trump are now divided into two factions in ideology.
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.
The chairman of the Crypto Committee, David Sacks, 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 currency 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 is that I sold SOL tokens to retail investors. If that were true, they should have made a lot of money 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 about his own memecoin $Sacks.
Although he tweeted nine times to tell people not to buy when they started buying, this has established 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 post about $Sacks.)
This made many people dislike David Sacks, thinking that his methods were too quick to achieve success and too eager to gain benefits through such radical means. Even if Sacks was not directly involved, as the chairman of the Crypto Committee, he should be held responsible for the incident. There are even rumors that someone proposed that the entire leadership team of David Sacks' Crypto 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, such as a16z, Coinbase, Paradigm, Ripple, Kraken and Circle, are very interested in this and are trying to have a say in the reform of U.S. crypto policies.
After all, the ordinary seats on the crypto committee are all "hot cakes", and David Sacks' words and deeds as the chairman of the committee are even more critical.
This is not the first time that the Trump team has shown an unstable state. During the last presidential term, the game and changes between different factions of the Trump administration's internal team members were huge, and personnel resignations were commonplace.
In this term, in addition to the competition for seats on the crypto 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 the people who recommended the launch of the $MELANIA project. "The project team lacks professional capabilities, may cause significant economic losses and damage to reputation, and the project decision does not fully consider Trump's interests." Selkis pointed out the problems with $MELANIA.
Compared to the $TRUMP coin, the release of $MELANIA issued by Trump's wife Melania is indeed more hasty. The front-end code is incomplete, the images are not compressed, the website was built only one day before the project was released, and the legal text is not rigorous. Many netizens speculate that $MELANIA and $TRUMP have many different methods and may not be operated by the same team.
"If my source is correct, $TRUMP is promoted by the crypto czar, and $MELANIA is made by the worldliberty team. But it is certain that these two coins are not made by the same team." More than one community member broke the news.
TRUMP was born at the time when Trump was about to take office, which was originally a shocking thing for the whole world and excited the cryptocurrency circle. We have always expected that cryptocurrencies 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 can not imagine that this is the beginning of the new US government's further embrace of cryptocurrencies? How much new attention can this beginning attract to cryptocurrencies with a historic positive image?
TRUMP comes from Trump, but unfortunately, it is not from the hands of "US President" Trump, but from the hands of "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 perfect legal compliance standards, but "businessman" Trump shows naked greed and disregard for morality. He completely regards the cryptocurrency market as a cash machine for his own influence, and can't wait to issue one asset after another to grab more benefits.
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 basic industry rules and ethics in his eyes, and puts himself above the entire crypto market. In Trump's 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 that there is nothing wrong with his behavior. What's wrong?
And Trump's wife Melania's issuance of coins 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 push-back feeling than this. But is it really good for the industry?
What Trump will lose is not only the trust of the cryptocurrency community, but also the morality and responsibility of a US president.
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