On the eve of the inauguration of the incoming U.S. President, Trump pulled off a major stunt for the American people and the world. In the final two days before the Presidential Compensation Clause of the U.S. Constitution took effect for himself, the Trump family siphoned off billions of dollars from the crypto world through a MEME coin.

The "U.S. President-Led Coin," this is definitely an unprecedented event, and the degree of circulation and wealth creation effect of the $TRUMP token is unparalleled. In just one weekend, its daily trading volume on the Binance platform broke through billions of U.S. dollars, even surpassing BTC at one point. From Wall Street financial institutions to elderly people on the Bund, the whole world is inquiring about how to join this feast.

Interestingly, this authentic "U.S. MEME Coin" made Chinese crypto enthusiasts one of the largest beneficiary groups. Since the token was launched during the night in the Eastern U.S., most American citizens were not able to seize this trading opportunity immediately. According to on-chain data and social media information, among over a hundred addresses that made profits exceeding one million U.S. dollars, half came from the Chinese community. At the same time, due to legal controversies and disagreements, Trump's "savage operation" also caused serious divisions within the crypto community.

Token Launch Process Review

On January 18, the incoming U.S. President Trump announced on his social media account the launch of his personal Meme coin $TRUMP, where users could access the official website to obtain this Meme token. The website stated that TRUMP is the only "official Trump Meme coin."

The gettrumpmemes website showed that 80% of the TRUMP coin's supply is held by entities affiliated with the Trump Organization, CIC Digital and CIC's entity Fight Fight Fight LLC. The website also stated that the initial circulation of TRUMP coins on the first day was 200 million, with a total circulation expected to reach 1 billion within three years, increasing gradually over three years. CIC Digital and its affiliates will receive income generated from TRUMP transactions, locked up for 3-12 months, and unlocked in the next 24 months.

Initially, the market still had doubts about this news, speculating that Trump's account may have been hacked. However, several hours later, the post remained without any denial, and the TRUMP coin surged rapidly. Twelve hours after the token was launched, its trading price reached around $30, with a Fully Diluted Valuation (FDV) of up to $300 billion. By 8 pm on January 19 Beijing time, according to CoinMarketCap data, the price of the TRUMP coin had risen to a high of $85.2 within a day and a half of its launch, with a total market capitalization reaching $852 billion. Trump's net worth thus surged by $68.16 billion (approximately 4.9893 trillion RMB), over 10 times higher than his net worth before the launch. On the 19th, Binance, Coinbase, and OKX also announced the listing of TRUMP (OFFICIAL TRUMP) for spot trading. Apart from Trump and the soaring SOL used to purchase Trump, all other tokens experienced significant drops, with ETH dropping to a low of $3,127, down 12% from the early morning of the 18th. Other meme tokens, AI agent tokens, etc., also experienced varying degrees of decline.

Image Source: CoinMarketCap

As $Trump was at the peak of his power and experiencing extreme FOMO, former President Trump's wife, Melania, also took advantage of the situation by launching her own cryptocurrency on the Solana blockchain called MELANIA. On the 20th, Melania posted on social media announcing, "Melania Official Meme is live," along with a purchase link.

The Trump family's trend-following coin launch seemed to deliver a heavy blow to the market. While MELANIA surged to a market cap of $12 billion driven by FOMO sentiment, all other coins experienced a sharp decline. TRUMP's market cap plummeted from $76 billion to $35 billion, SOL dropped from $297 to $235, and Bitcoin saw a sudden 6% drop. The crypto community angrily accused the Trump family of treating cryptocurrency as their own "ATM," blurring the line between government roles and personal gain, and shamelessly leveraging the international influence of the former president for their own profit. Many media outlets questioned the Trump family's coin launch behavior, opposing and condemning this money-grabbing act.

Riding the Hype While Holding the Bag: The Newly Wealthy Asian Crypto Traders vs. American Retail Investors Buying into Belief

Hu Xijin, former Editor-in-Chief of the Global Times in China, commented on Trump's coin launch, saying, "Capitalism! So, the presidential position can be monetized this way! Mr. Trump has truly broadened the horizons of someone like me living in a socialist country." But perhaps what amazed this former professional journalist even more is that besides the "insider trading," the biggest beneficiaries of this presidential coin issuance were the Asian on-chain traders.

The following chart shows the TRUMP trading trend based on US East Coast time, with the coin launched on Friday night, January 17th, or Saturday morning in Beijing time. From the chart, it is evident that the significant price surges on January 18th to 19th were mostly concentrated during the Asian trading sessions.

New York Time TRUMP Trading Trend Chart

On January 18th, just an hour after the TRUMP coin launch and with a market cap just exceeding $100 million, the community identified the top profit-taking addresses for TRUMP. There were already 10 Chinese KOLs with profits exceeding $1 million.

Image Source: ChainTea

When TRUMP's market value rose to $15 billion just 4 hours after its launch, Chinese KOL 0xSun announced his TRUMP PnL on Twitter, revealing a total cost of 3010 SOL tokens and a profit of $10 million. A day later, 0xSun transferred his TRUMP holdings to a centralized exchange (CEX) and updated his PnL for the last time, showing a profit of $27.5 million.

"It's been 4 hours, but it's also been living on the chain for 3 years, sitting idle for over 10 hours a day since entering the DeFi space," 0xSun wrote in a tweet. As TRUMP's market value soared past $30 billion, the Chinese community was not only amazed and regretful for not buying at the bottom but also reflecting on why they missed this opportunity. Xinfini founder Christian provided an answer, suggesting that without a certain amount of initial capital and going all in on Solana at the very beginning, it was impossible to achieve significant gains from TRUMP.

In contrast, the performance of American retail investors appeared more passive. The English community had far fewer public profit-takers in the Trump project, with even top meme KOL Ansem exiting at a loss.

The address marked as Ansem made a purchase on January 19th, when TRUMP's market value had already exceeded $30 billion. At that time, the U.S. crypto exchange Kraken had just launched TRUMP spot trading. On January 20th, as Robinhood announced its support for TRUMP, Ansem added to his position. By January 21st, Ansem had sold all his TRUMP holdings, with total losses kept under $80,000.

American YouTuber voidzilla criticized this behavior in a video, saying, "This kind of behavior is unparalleled in terms of stupidity and fraud. Leveraging the days leading up to the presidential inauguration to hype a meme project is simply mind-blowing. Just two days away from the inauguration ceremony, one should be busy preparing the inauguration speech, not launching a meme coin. At a crucial moment in the presidential election, using power to create such a hype not only breaks historical records but also blatantly tramples on all moral boundaries."

However, the president's appeal to retail investors was still strong, and on January 18th alone, Moonshot added approximately 400,000 new users. Twitter was flooded with posts about how to use Moonshot to purchase TRUMP, with some users even complaining about its complexity. In a discussion about the purchasing process, someone recommended using the Phantom wallet, to which another user replied, "I just wanted to deposit some cash or dollars, but it insists on making me buy SOL, Bitcoin, or something like that."

Furthermore, due to the inability of U.S. banks to process large deposits or fund transfers over the weekend, this further limited U.S. investors' gains in TRUMP. The delay in fund movement caused American retail investors to miss a crucial entry time window, becoming liquidity providers in the later stages of the price surge.

On one hand, Asia-based traders who are always on-chain identified the asset at the right time and made significant investments; on the other hand, the U.S. crypto trading community had compliant Moonshot purchase channels coupled with admiration for the national leader, causing them to overlook early chips and willingly become the liquidity for the president and whales to exit.

How Much Money Did the Trump Family Make from the Crypto Market?

After Trump's wife Melania released a token bearing her name, the price of $Trump also dropped from $78 to $35. However, with the news of $Trump being listed on RobinHOOD, the price surged again. The recent news combined with market-making activities in the past few days makes one marvel at the terrifying conspiracy of the capital behind the scenes, silently utilizing every exit liquidity to the fullest. This is not the first time the Trump team has profited in the blockchain field, but it is the most sensational. So how much money did the Trump team make in the cryptocurrency field?

Cryptocurrency Political Donations

As the first president to accept cryptocurrency political donations, he unprecedentedly accepted BTC, ETH, SOL, and other mainstream altcoins on his official website. He even accepted meme coins like Dogecoin and received over $4 million worth of cryptocurrency. Supporters from the crypto industry also received millions of dollars in traditional investments.

Earning $20 Million in NFTs is Just the Beginning

In December 2022, Trump announced the launch of the first set of Trump-themed NFTs. These trading cards featured Trump in various roles, with a total of 45,000 cards priced at $99 each. Within 24 hours, the NFTs were sold out, bringing Trump $4.5 million. This allowed Trump, who was not a crypto enthusiast at the time, to taste success. Similar products were subsequently released by the Trump team on Polygon, with four series—including a limited edition one—and a series on Bitcoin. The sale of nearly 200,000 Trump trading card NFTs and royalties brought the Trump team over $20 million in revenue.

The key figure behind the scenes of this series is CIC Digital LLC, a company founded by former President Trump's lawyer John Marion and former advisor Nick Luna in 2021. The issuer of the "Trump Digital Trading Cards," NFT INT LLC, stated on its website that it is an independent entity and is not owned, managed, or controlled by Donald J. Trump. Instead, it acquired the rights to use Trump's name and likeness by purchasing them from CIC Digital LLC to create and sell this NFT series. However, upon further investigation into NFT INT LLC, it was found that the contact address provided on its official website is located at a UPS store in Park City, Utah, in the United States. However, the registered address is in Cheyenne, the capital of Wyoming, also known as the "American Little Cayman Islands," approximately 480 kilometers away from Park City, implying that this company is likely one of many ghost companies.

《2-Day 10x Trump NFT: Was the Former President Himself Behind It?》

In Search of DeFi Yield Farmers, $300 Million Isn't Enough to Fill the Gap

World Liberty Fi was jointly launched by former President Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Eric Trump. Donald Trump Jr. emphasized that this is not just a simple Memecoin but rather a project dedicated to providing decentralized top-tier financial and banking tools while strictly following relevant regulations to ensure user safety. Interestingly, with the soaring popularity of the $Trump Memecoin released by Trump, the Trump family's DeFi project World Liberty Financial (WLFI) sold out its 20 billion tokens offered to the public this morning at a price of $0.015 per token, raising a total of $300 million. Among the buyers, Tron's founder, Justin Sun, alone contributed $30 million and announced an additional $45 million investment in the name of the Tron DAO.

Following the sellout of the originally planned 20% public sale allocation, WLFI generously opened an additional 5% allocation for the community to purchase. If this additional allocation is fully subscribed, the on-chain address holding the $300 million could receive an additional $75 million.

It is worth noting that, two days before the $Trump release, WLFI suddenly reduced their Ethereum holdings from around 17,000 ETH accumulated over several months to 1,200 ETH "transferred to Coinbase or another address." This was after $Trump heavily drained on-chain assets and many ETH whales shifted to Solana. Starting on the 19th, multiple Ethereum purchases were made, and the current holdings have exceeded 42,000 ETH, executing a successful "buy the dip" strategy. This move transformed Ethereum's losses into gains, surpassing one-third of the total assets held by that address.

The Ultimate Weapon, an unprecedented Crypto large-cap consolidation scene

This is probably the chart you have seen repeated the most in recent days: the U.S. President launching a Memecoin. While such an event seemed impossible, associating it with Trump made it somewhat plausible. In reality, the Trump family, through three generations of hard work, finally accumulated a $4 billion fortune. After the Memecoin launch, the market cap reached $800 billion within two days, surpassing a century of struggle with a global frenzy in just 48 hours. At its peak, $Trump had an FDV of $800 billion, with an actual market cap of $160 billion based on 20% of the circulating supply. However, the current actual market cap has plummeted to $60 billion. Most of the $10 billion in market-siphoned liquidity has disappeared, not to mention the market's new influx of funds due to the U.S. president's influence. The short-term impact of a single token on a market averaging $1-2 trillion cannot be underestimated.

The entity responsible for the $Trump issuance is a company within the Trump family, in addition to the previously mentioned Trump CIC Digital LLC, the main entity being Fight Fight Fight LLC. These two companies hold 80% of the $Trump token allocation. Although the total unlock period is 3 years, the majority of the allocation (40%) can start unlocking in the third month under a six-part unlocking schedule. While we cannot determine how much profit insiders, apart from this 80%, have made, considering the listings from Coinbase to Robinhood, as well as Moonshot's announcement allowing direct deposits from Robinhood, it seems $Trump will sustain its popularity and market cap for a significant period using Trump's supporters, traditional stock investors' funds, and a large influx of new investors. Therefore, if 4% of the chips unlock after 3 months...

Even if the current market value is halved, it can still achieve a liquidity exit of several billion dollars.

Meanwhile, the token of Donald Trump's wife, the First Lady of the United States, $MELANIA, is "unrelated" to Trump himself, with the token issued by MKT World, LLC. According to publicly available company records, Melania's position in the company is both a member and a manager, and the company's address at 3505 SUMMIT BLVD. WEST PALM BEACH, FL 33406 is very close to the Trump family's residence in Florida.

The tokenomics of $MELANIA are somewhat different from $TRUMP's. Team Share 35%, Treasury 20%, Community 20%, Public Issuance 15%, Liquidity 10%. The biggest difference lies in the token unlock rules, where TRUMP's team share requires a 3-year lockup, but MELANIA's team only requires a full 30-day lockup. Starting from day 30, the team's share will begin with a 10% unlock, followed by linear unlocks from months 2-13 until fully unlocked by the 13th month. This short-term and unclear token allocation strategy caused the token's market value to rapidly plummet from $15 billion all the way down to $3.3 billion, almost a mere 20% of its peak value. This hasty token unlock rule and the rapid decline in value over a short period resembles a meme coin. One can't help but wonder if this is just a means to allow $Trump to regain control through a pullback narrative.

Regardless, Trump's team had maintained some level of rationality in their accumulation until these past few days. However, Trump's recent actions have left people stunned. Regardless of the numerous disclaimers or exploitation of legal loopholes, the fact remains that before taking office as the President of the United States and advocating for "Make America Great Again," the focus seems to have shifted to "Make Crime Great Again."

Pro-Trump Crypto Group Starts Feud, Is the “Trump Crypto Faction” Also Divided?

In fact, not everyone supports Trump directly issuing a coin. Previously, the Trump team minted an NFT to earn $20 million, which was considered relatively “mild,” and many community members had not reacted yet.

However, today's situation is completely different. In order to circumvent presidential investment restrictions, on the eve before taking office in the “Goose City,” the Trump couple directly engaged in coin issuance, lockups, early buys at peak prices, allowing an entire interest group behind them to achieve “risk-free profit” at the fastest speed.

Many people can harvest in the crypto space, but one cannot be the President, and many have expressed strong concerns about this.

Venture capitalist Nick Tomaino wrote on Platform X: “Trump holds 80% of TrumpCoin and scheduled the token launch just a few days before the inauguration ceremony. This is undoubtedly a predatory behavior, and many people may be harmed as a result.”

Anthony Scaramucci, a banker who briefly served as White House Communications Director during Trump's previous term (he was fired after 10 days in office), also criticized on Platform X: “Trump meme coins are detrimental to the cryptocurrency industry, we must not delude ourselves.”

Image Source Community

What's even more embarrassing for the crypto community is that initially we made political donations one after another, we shouted “Fire Gary Gensler,” we eagerly anticipated a pro-crypto industry President, we hoped the crypto industry would receive more attention and liquidity.

Has it been achieved? Yes. According to community members and exchange platform staff, a well-known trading platform usually had only a few hundred registered users and $700,000 in OTC trading volume. However, on January 20th, the registration count reached 120,000 and OTC volume also reached $100 million. Furthermore, a top exchange platform saw its new user registration count break millions within three days.

But the method of achievement was not by treating Bitcoin as the U.S. national strategic reserve, not by having a new batch of mainstream coins approved for ETFs, not by establishing new crypto laws, but by launching meme coins that drained most of the crypto community’s liquidity.

Image Source: Community WeChat

It is not considered dignified or ethical. Many in the crypto community who once supported Trump have now openly expressed their opposition.

"What he did is absolutely absurd." Nic Carter, founding partner of the cryptocurrency investment firm Castle Island Ventures, who had publicly admitted to being a Trump supporter, still said, "For them to roll out a meme coin to explore this is just asinine."

Even the crypto media outlet Bitcoin Magazine, known for its pro-Trump stance during the election, has now taken to social media to call TRUMP a shitcoin.

It's worth noting that Trump was marketed as the "first Bitcoin president of the United States," and Bitcoin Magazine played a significant role in this. At the official Bitcoin 2024 conference hosted by the magazine, Trump took the stage to deliver a speech himself, announcing the launch of a Bitcoin reserve strategy to ensure the U.S. becomes a global crypto hub and a Bitcoin superpower. He even planned to dismiss the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Trump's crypto-friendly policies all started with this speech.

"In my view, this is nothing more than a pump-and-dump self-enrichment scam, an unethical act, and the investors involved (or should I say 'fans') are extremely foolish." However, the authors at Bitcoin Magazine now criticize without reservation. Related reading: "Bitcoin Magazine Lambasts $TRUMP: Trump Likes Cryptocurrency, as Long as It Can Be Used for Self-Enrichment"

Media values are top-down, and although Bitcoin Magazine CEO David Bailey was previously a Trump campaign advisor, he is said to be among the pro-Trump crypto group that tried to dissuade Trump from launching a coin.

He has repeatedly clarified on social media, saying, "I have no association with Trump's memecoin, no prior notice, and no financial gain," and "My advice and advocacy are all beneficial to Bitcoin and the country."

As a crypto advisor during the campaign, David Bailey's current position is more like Trump's lubricant to the community. Even though he does not endorse Trump's coin issuance plan, he still tries to appease the community: "I am very grateful for everything that Trump has done for Bitcoin and the entire industry and will do" and "Events like Ross's release 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 have now divided into two ideological factions.

One faction is Bitcoin Magazine, while the other faction opposing Bitcoin Magazine is commonly known as the "Crypto Council," whose members were personally appointed by Trump.

The chairman of the Crypto Council, David Sacks, is well known as one of the PayPal founders, gained fame by creating Yammer and selling it to Microsoft for $1.2 billion. In the crypto circle, David Sacks' most important identity is as an investor in the crypto venture capital firm Multicoin and a maximalist of Solana.

"One of the dumbest attacks against me this year is that I sold SOL tokens to retail investors. If that were true, they should be rolling in money now. Congratulations to all SOL holders." Even during the FTX rug pull, Sacks never sold SOL.

As $TRUMP is deployed on the Solana chain and when Trump issued $TRUMP coins, David Sacks has always remained silent on these "zero-sum meme coins," leading many to believe that the chairman of the Crypto Council was involved.

Another piece of evidence is that David Sacks has a "criminal record." In March 2024, David Sacks once posted about a memecoin named $Sacks.

Even though he tweeted nine times telling people not to buy when they started buying, this has confirmed the evidence that he "once issued a coin," which is exactly the same as the method of issuing $TRUMP coins. (According to community feedback, David Sacks recently deleted his posts about $Sacks.)

Source: Community

This has made many people start to resent David Sacks, feeling that his methods are too hasty and overly eager to seek benefits through this aggressive approach. Even if Sacks did not directly participate, as the chair of the Crypto Council, he is still responsible for this event. There are even rumors that some have suggested the entire leadership team of David Sacks' Crypto Council should be replaced with a new lineup.

According to a Washington cryptocurrency lobbyist who prefers to remain anonymous, almost everyone in the crypto space is vying for a seat on this council. Many crypto giants such as a16z, Coinbase, Paradigm, Ripple, Kraken, and Circle are very interested in this and are trying to seek a voice in US crypto policy reform.

After all, the ordinary member seats of this Crypto Council are all "hot cakes" now, and David Sacks' words and actions as the council's chair are crucial.

This is not the first time the Trump team has shown signs of instability. During the previous presidential term, there was a great deal of factional struggle and turnover within the Trump administration, and resignations were commonplace.

In addition to the competition for seats on the Crypto Council this time, the internal political risk of the Trump team is also evident in other aspects.

Although not naming names, Messari founder Ryan Selkis tweeted calling on Trump to fire personnel involved in launching the $MELANIA project. "The project team lacks professionalism, may cause significant economic and reputational damage, and the project decisions do not adequately consider Trump's interests." Selkis pointed out the issues with $MELANIA.

Compared to the $TRUMP coin, the launch of $MELANIA by Trump's wife Melania was indeed more hasty. The front-end code is incomplete, the images are not compressed, the website was only built the day before the project launch, and the legal text is also not meticulous. Many netizens speculate that there are many differences in approach between $MELANIA and $TRUMP, indicating they may not be operated by the same team.

「If my source is not mistaken, $TRUMP was driven by the Crypto Tsar, while $MELANIA was done by the worldliberty team. However, one thing that can be confirmed is that these two coins were not created by the same team.」 More than one community member revealed this.

The Erosion of Trust, How Long Does It Take?

TRUMP emerged into the scene at the time of Trump's inauguration, originally an event that shocked the world and uplifted the cryptocurrency community. We have always hoped that cryptocurrency could demonstrate a more compliant, stable, and secure image to a broader mainstream audience worldwide. With such aspirations, $TRUMP carried too many expectations of the cryptocurrency community—it came from the hands of the incoming US president, who wouldn't imagine that this could be the beginning of the new US government further embracing cryptocurrency? Starting from this point, how many new eyes could this historic positive image attract to cryptocurrency?

TRUMP came from the hands of Trump, but unfortunately, not from the hands of the "US President" Trump, but from the hands of the "businessman" Trump. The "US President" Trump had the ability to issue and promote $TRUMP and even the entire cryptocurrency market with higher moral standards and more comprehensive legal compliance standards. However, what the "businessman" Trump showed was blatant greed and disregard for ethics, using the cryptocurrency market as an ATM to cash in on his influence, eagerly issuing asset after asset to seize more profits.

In the end, Trump only mentioned the cryptocurrency industry for votes. Did he really consider how to better promote the industry's development? What we saw was a "big shot" who was completely self-centered, with no regard for basic industry rules and ethics, placing himself above the entire crypto market. In Trump's eyes, the cryptocurrency market may be no different from setting up a stall in his own backyard. As long as someone is willing to pay for his influence, he thinks, what's wrong with his actions?

And Melania Trump's coin issuance has become a helpless self-deprecation within the cryptocurrency community—Trump and his family mock how foolish our unrealistic expectations are.

From a speculator's perspective, this is undoubtedly a speculative heyday, and there is no more perfect narrative and sense of providence than this. But is it really good for the industry?

What Trump will lose is not just the trust of the cryptocurrency community in him but also the morals and responsibilities of a US president.

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