On the eve of taking office as President of the United States, Trump gave the American people and the world a big job. In the last two days before the emoluments regulations of the U.S. Constitution took effect on him, the Trump family made tens of billions of dollars from the currency circle through MEME coins.

"The President of the United States takes the lead in issuing coins." This is definitely an unprecedented event, and the extent of the $TRUMP token's out- of-circulation and wealth creation effects are also unique. In just one weekend, its daily trading volume on the Binance platform exceeded 10 billion US dollars, even surpassing BTC for a time. From financial institutions on Wall Street to grandparents on the Bund, the world is asking how to get in on the party.

What’s interesting is that this “American MEME Coin” with its popular roots has actually made Chinese currency speculators one of the largest profit- making groups. Since the token was issued at night in the Eastern United States, most U.S. citizens were not able to seize this trading opportunity immediately. According to on-chain data and social media information statistics, half of the more than 100 addresses that have made 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 "sexy operation" has also caused serious differences among the encryption community.

Review of coin issuance process

On January 18, incoming U.S. President Trump posted a message on his social account, announcing the launch of his personal Meme currency $TRUMP. Users can obtain the Meme token by entering the official website. According to the website, TRUMP is the only “official Trump Meme coin.”

The official website of gettrumpmemes shows that 80% of the supply of TRUMP coins is held by CIC Digital, an affiliate of the Trump Organization, 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 is 200 million, and the issuance is expected to reach 1 billion within three years, gradually increasing in three years. CIC Digital and its related parties will receive the income generated from TRUMP trading activities. Locked for 3-12 months and unlocked in the next 24 months.


At first, the market still doubted the news and speculated that Trump's account might have been stolen. However, a few hours later, the article still existed without refuting the rumor, and the TRUMP currency rose rapidly. Twelve hours after the token was issued, its trading price reached approximately $30, with an FDV of up to $30 billion. As of 8 pm Beijing time on January 19, according to CoinMarketCap data, the price of TRUMP currency has risen to a maximum of 85.2 US dollars within a day and a half of the currency's issuance, and the full circulation market value has reached a maximum of 85.2 billion US dollars. Trump's worth has soared. 68.16 billion US dollars (approximately 498.93 billion yuan), which is more than 10 times higher than its value before the currency was issued. On the 19th, Binance, Coinbase, and OKX also announced the launch of TRUMP (OFFICIAL TRUMP) spot trading. Except for Trump and sol used to buy Trump, all other tokens have plummeted. The price of ETH dropped to as low as $3,127, down 12% from the early morning of the 18th. Other meme tokens, AI agent tokens, etc. all fell sharply. There were declines of varying magnitudes.


Source: CoinMarketCap

When $Trump was at the height of its power and FOMO was at its peak, Trump’s wife Melania also took advantage of the situation and launched her own cryptocurrency MELANIA on the Solana chain. On the 20th, Melania posted on social media saying, "Melania's official Meme is online" and attached a link to purchase.


The Trump family’s follow-up coin issuance behavior seemed to have dealt a heavy blow to the market. Except for MELANIA, which rose to a market value of US$120 driven by fomo sentiment, all other coins fell across the board. TRUMP’s market value halved from US$76 billion to US$35 billion. , SOL fell directly from $297 to $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 own "cash machine", blurring the boundaries between government roles and commercial interests, and nakedly using the president's international influence to benefit themselves. Many media outlets have questioned the Trump family’s currency issuance behavior and opposed and rebuked this money-making behavior.

While flipping, taking over: Asian young currency speculators who suddenly

got rich VS American retail investors who pay for their beliefs

Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of China’s Global Times, tweeted commenting on Trump’s coin issuance: “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 what may be more eye-opening for this former professional media person is that apart from the "rat warehouse" of Mr. President's currency issuance, it is the traders on the Asian chain who have made the most profits.

The picture below shows the TRUMP trading trend chart based on Eastern Time. The currency issuance time is 9 pm on Friday, January 17, which is 10 am on Saturday morning Beijing time. As can be seen from the chart, the sharp price increases from January 18th to 19th were concentrated during the Asian trading session.


New York time TRUMP trading chart

On January 18, one hour after TRUMP issued its currency and its market value had just exceeded US$100 million, the community counted TRUMP's front-row profit-making addresses and found that 10 Chinese KOLs had profits exceeding US$1 million.


Source: Lianzhi

When the market value of TRUMP rose to US$15 billion, just 4 hours after the coin was issued, Chinese KOL 0xSun announced its own TRUMP PnL on One day later, the last update to PnL before 0xSun transferred TRUMP to CEX showed that it had made a profit of $27.5 million.


“It’s been 4 hours, and it’s been 3 years since I started living on the chain, with an average of more than 10 hours of sitting per day,” 0xSun wrote in a tweet. When TRUMP's market value soared and exceeded US$30 billion, in addition to being surprised and lamenting that they did not get the bottom bargaining chip, 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 without a certain amount of principal on the Solana chain and all-in at the first time, it is impossible to achieve big results on TRUMP.


In contrast, the performance of U.S. retail investors appears to be more passive. There are far fewer public profit takers in the English community on Trump’s coin issuance, and even the top meme KOL Ansem left the market with losses.

The address tagged Ansem only made the purchase on the morning of January 19th, Beijing time, when the market value of TRUMP had exceeded US$30 billion. At that time, the American crypto trading platform Kraken had just launched TRUMP spot trading. On January 20, around the time Robinhood announced the listing of TRUMP, Ansem added another position to buy TRUMP. On January 21, Ansem cut off and sold all TRUMP, and the total loss was controlled within US$80,000.


American YouTuber voidzilla directly cursed in the video, "This behavior is unprecedented in terms of stupidity and fraud. Using the days before the president's inauguration to build momentum for a hype project is simply jaw- dropping. The inauguration is just a few days away. For two days, he should have been busy writing his inauguration speech instead of issuing meme coins. Using his power to carry out such hype at a critical moment in the presidential campaign not only breaks history, but also blatantly tramples on all moral bottom lines."

But it still couldn't resist the appeal of the President's brand to retail investors. On January 18 alone, Moonshot added about 400,000 new users. Twitter is filled with posts about how to use Moonshot to buy TRUMP, and some users even complain about the complexity of its operation. In a discussion about the purchase method, someone recommended using the Phantom wallet, and another user replied, "I just want to save some cash or US dollars, but it has to let me buy SOL, Bitcoin, etc."

As U.S. banks were unable to conduct large-denomination certificates of deposit or fund transfers over the weekend, U.S. investors' profits on TRUMP were further restricted. The lag in capital flows caused U.S. retail investors to miss a critical entry time window, which became the late stage of the currency price rise. liquidity provider.

On the one hand, Asian traders resident on the chain discovered the target at the right time and entered the market with heavy positions; on the other hand, the American currency speculators had compliant Moonshot purchase channels and worshiped the national leaders, which made them Ignore the early chips and be willing to be the president and the exit liquidity of the big players.

How much money did the Trump family make from the crypto market?

After Trump’s wife Melania released a token of the same name, the price of $Trump also fell from $78 to $35. As the news of RobinHOOD listing $Trump has picked up again, the news in the past few days has cooperated with market making. I have to lament the terror of the capital cabal behind it, quietly using resources to maximize the liquidity of each exit. 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 has the Trump team made in the cryptocurrency field?

Cryptocurrency political donations

As the first president to accept cryptocurrency political donations, he has unprecedentedly accepted not only BTC but also mainstream altcoins such as ETH and SOL on his official website. He also accepted Memecoins such as Dogecoin. In the end, the value of the cryptocurrency he received exceeded 400. million dollars, while millions more have been received in traditional investments from industry backers in the crypto space.


Making $20 million on NFT is just a small taste of it

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 priced at $99. Within 24 hours, the NFT sold out, bringing $4.5 million directly to Trump. This also gave Trump, who was not a pro- cryptocurrency faction at the time, a taste of the sweetness. For products of the same type like this, the Trump team has released four series "one of which is a rare special edition" on Polygon, as well as a series on Bitcoin, the sale of nearly 200,000 Trump trading card NFTs, and Royalties generated more than $20 million for the Trump campaign.


A key force behind the series is CIC Digital LLC, a company founded in 2021 by Trump attorney 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 "NFT INT LLC" is not owned, managed or controlled by Trump (Donald J. Trump), but through Purchased a license to use Trump's name and likeness from CIC Digital LLC, produced and sold the NFT series. 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 away from Park City, which means that this company is likely to be one of the ghost companies.

"Trump NFT that doubled in 2 days, was it issued by the former president himself?" 》


Directly looking for DeFi leeks, $300 million is not enough to fill the

gap between teeth


World Liberty Fi was jointly launched by President Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. Donald Trump Jr. has emphasized that this is not a simple Memecoin, but a community dedicated to providing Decentralized top-level financial and banking tools while strictly adhering to relevant regulations to ensure user safety. What’s interesting is that with the popularity of $Trump Memecoin released by Trump, the 20 billion tokens publicly sold by the Trump family’s DeFi project World Liberty Financial (WLFI) have also been sold out this morning, with a unit price of US$0.015, totaling It raised US$300 million, of which Justin Sun, the boss of the well-known chain Tron, contributed US$30 million alone and announced an additional investment of US$45 million in the name of Tron DAO.

As the original 20% of the public sale quota was sold out, WLFI "mercy" opened an additional 5% of the quota for the community to purchase. If it is filled again, the on-chain address of this US$300 million value will An additional $75 million can be added.


It is worth noting that two days before $Trump was released, the 17,000 Ethereum that WLFI had been hoarding at this address in recent months was suddenly reduced to 1,200 "transferred to Coinbase or other addresses." After all the assets on the chain were drained, a large number of ETH majors swapped positions in Solana. I started making multiple purchases of Ethereum on the 19th, and my current position has exceeded 42,000 Ethereum. I made a "good swing", which turned Ethereum's income from loss to profit, and also allowed Ethereum to exceed the total assets of this address. one third.


The ultimate killer weapon, the unprecedented Crypto large-scale

consolidation scene


This should be the picture that you have seen the most in recent days. The President of the United States issued Memecoin, which is a completely impossible thing to happen to Trump, but it can be rationalized. The fact is that the Trump family has worked hard for three generations, and the family wealth has finally accumulated to 4 billion. After Memecoin was released, its market value reached US$80 billion within two days. More than 100 years of struggle was not worth two days of global carnival. $Trump's peak FDV of $80 billion, based on 20% of the circulating market value, has an actual market value of $16 billion, but now the actual market value is only $6 billion. However, most of the US$10 billion in liquidity in the middle blood-sucking market has disappeared in the market. Regardless of the new increase in the market that the influence of the US president can bring, a single token brings an average of US$100 billion to US$200 billion to the market. The short-term impact is huge.


The company responsible for the issuance of $Trump this time is a company owned by the Trump family. 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 tokens. Although the total unlocking time is 3 years, the largest part of the six-part unlocking model "40% share" can begin to be unlocked in the third month, although we have no way of knowing what the inside trader will do other than this 80%. How much will it benefit? But from the listing of Coinbase to Robinhood, and Moonshot’s announcement that it can be directly used for deposits from Robinhood, $Trump should use the funds of Trump supporters and traditional stock markets as well as a large number of new leeks to maintain the balance. Popularity and market value over a period of time, so if 4% of the chips are unlocked after 3 months

Even if the market capitalization was half of what it is today, it would still be able to obtain billions of dollars in exit liquidity.


The token of Trump’s wife, the First Lady of the United States, $MELANIA, 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, and the query online According to the company information obtained, Melania's position in the company is both a member and a manager, and the company address is 3505 SUMMIT BLVD. WEST PALM BEACH, FL 33406 It is very close to Mrs. Trump’s home address in Florida.


The token economic model of $MELANIA is not quite the same as $TRUMP. The team share is 35%, the treasury is 20%, the community is 20%, the public offering is 15%, and the liquidity is 10%. The biggest difference lies in the token unlocking rules. The TRUMP team's share needs to be locked for 3 years, but the MELANIA team only needs to fully lock for 30 days. Starting from the 30th day, 10% of the team share will be unlocked first, and then gradually linearly unlocked from the 2nd to the 13th month until it is fully unlocked in the 13th month. This short-term and unclear allocation of chips also caused the market value of tokens to quickly drop from 15 billion US dollars to 3.3 billion US dollars without looking back, which is almost only 20% of the high point. Such hasty token unlocking rules and the rapid decline in a short period of time The token is really like Dogecoin. One can't help but wonder whether this is just a news-based ploy to get $Trump to pull back on the market.


No matter what, the Trump team has retained a trace of sanity in making money in the past few days, but Trump's operations in the past few days have left people stunned. No matter how many disclaimers or legal loopholes are used, before taking office as the US President Make America Great Again It is an indisputable fact that Make Crime Great Again comes first.


Pro-Trump encryption groups are scolding, and the "Trump encryption

faction" has also split?

In fact, not everyone supports Trump’s direct currency issuance. Previously, the Trump team's profit of $20 million from issuing NFT was relatively "modest", and many community members had 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 in the "Goose City", the Trumps directly issued coins, locked up positions, and bought early and sold at high points, leaving an entire interest group behind them. , achieving "no capital and huge profits" at the fastest speed.

Many people can be harvested in the currency circle, but they cannot be the president. Many people have expressed strong concerns about this.

Venture capitalist Nick Tomaino wrote on the will be harmed by this.”

Banker Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as the White House communications director during Trump’s last term (and was fired after 10 days in office), also criticized the Harmful, we must not deceive ourselves.”


What’s even more embarrassing is the currency circle. Back then, we made political donations one after another, and we shouted “Fire Gary Gensler.” We longed for a president who was pro-crypto industry. We hoped that the crypto industry would get more attention and be better. Much liquidity.

Has it been achieved? Realized. According to community and trading platform staff, a well-known trading platform usually has only a few hundred registered people, and the OTC transaction amount is 700,000 US dollars. However, on January 20, the number of registered people reached 120,000, and the OTC amount also reached 1 billion dollars. The number of new user registrations for a leading trading platform also exceeded millions in three days.

But the way to achieve this is not to use Bitcoin as the U.S. national strategic reserve, not to pass a new batch of mainstream currencies through ETFs, not to establish a new encryption bill, but to issue meme coins that suck up most of the liquidity in the currency circle.


Not decent or moral. Many people in the currency circle who once supported Trump have now publicly expressed their opposition.

“What he did was absolutely ridiculous.” Nic Carter, a founding partner of the cryptocurrency investment company Castle Island Ventures, has openly admitted to being a Sichuan fan, but he still said: “They launched meme coins to explore how stupid this can be. "

Even Bitcoin Magazine, a pro-Trump crypto media during the election, said on social platforms that TRUMP is a shitcoin.


You know, Trump is marketed as "the first Bitcoin president of the United States", and Bitcoin Magazine is indispensable. At the official Bitcoin 2024 conference hosted by it, Trump personally took the stage to give a speech and announced the launch of a Bitcoin strategic reserve to ensure that the United States becomes the world’s encryption center and Bitcoin superpower. He also plans to fire the chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) wait. Trump’s encryption-friendly policies all started with this speech.

"In my opinion, this is nothing more than a pump-and-sell self-profit scam, an unethical behavior, and the investors (I should say "fans") involved are extremely stupid. ” However, now the writers of Bitcoin Magazine are bluntly criticizing. 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, it is said that he was also the person in the pro-Sichuan 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 as a lubricant between Trump and the community. Even though he did not agree with Trump's currency issuance plan, he still tried his best to appease the community: "I am very grateful for everything Trump has done and will do for Bitcoin and the entire industry." "The series of 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 encryption people around Trump are now ideologically divided into two groups.

Bitcoin Magazine is one faction, and the other faction standing opposite Bitcoin Magazine is the so-called "Encryption Committee", whose members are all personally selected by Trump.

David Sacks, chairman of the Crypto Council, is best known as one of the founders of PayPal and 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 company Multicoin and a Solana maximalist.

"One of the stupidest attacks on me this year is that I sold SOL tokens to retail investors. If that were true, they would have made a lot of money by now. Congratulations to everyone who holds SOL." Sacks never sold SOL even when the FTX thunderstorm occurred.

Because $TRUMP is deployed on the solana chain, and when Trump issued $TRUMP coins, David Sacks always remained silent about these "zero-sum meme coins", many people believe that the chairman of the encryption committee must be involved. in.


Another piece of evidence is that David Sacks has a "criminal record." In March 2024, David Sacks posted about his own name, the memecoin $Sacks.

Although when people started buying, he tweeted nine times to tell them not to buy, this was solid evidence that he had "ever issued coins", which was exactly the same method used to issue $TRUMP coins. (According to feedback from community members, David Sacks recently deleted his post about $Sacks.)


This has made many people dislike David Sacks, feeling that his methods are too eager for quick success and too eager to seek benefits through such radical methods. Even if Sacks was not directly involved, as chairman of the cryptographic committee, he is responsible for the incident. There are even rumors that someone proposed that the entire leadership team of David Sacks’ Encryption Committee should be replaced and a new team should be created.

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 US encryption policy.

After all, the ordinary members of this encryption committee are all "hot cakes", and the words and deeds of David Sacks as the chairman of the committee are even more critical.

This is not the first time that the Trump team has shown instability. During the last presidential term, the internal team members of the Trump administration had great conflicts and changes among different factions, and resignations were commonplace.

In this term, in addition to the fight for seats on the Encryption Committee, the internal political risks of the Trump team are also reflected in other aspects.

Although he did not name anyone, Messari founder Ryan Selkis tweeted to call on Trump, suggesting that he fire the relevant personnel who recommended the launch of the $MELANIA project. "The project team lacks professional capabilities, may cause significant economic losses and damage to goodwill, and project decisions do not fully consider Trump's interests." Selkis pointed out the problems with $MELANIA.


Compared with 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 only built one day before the project was released, and the legal text is not rigorous. Many netizens speculate that there are many differences in the methods of $MELANIA and $TRUMP, and they may not be operated by the same team.

"If my source is correct, $TRUMP was promoted by the crypto czar, while $MELANIA was made by the worldliberty team. But what is certain is that these two coins are not made by the same team." More than one community member Such a revelation.

How long does it take for trust to be consumed?

The emergence of TRUMP at the time when Trump was about to take office was originally a thing that shocked the world and excited the cryptocurrency circle. We have always been looking forward to cryptocurrency being able to show a more compliant, stable and secure image to more mainstream people around the world. With this desire, $TRUMP carries too many expectations from the cryptocurrency circle - it Coming from the hands of the incoming President of the United States, who can not imagine that this is the beginning of the new U.S. government’s further embrace of cryptocurrency? How much new attention can this beginning attract to cryptocurrency with a historically positive image?

TRUMP came from Trump, but unfortunately, it did not come from the "President of the United States" Trump, but from the "businessman" Trump. "President of the United States" Trump is fully capable of issuing and promoting the development of $TRUMP and even the entire cryptocurrency market with higher ethical standards and better legal compliance standards, but what "Businessman" Trump has shown is Naked greed and disregard for morality have completely used the cryptocurrency market as a cash machine to realize their influence, and they can't wait to issue assets one after another to grab more benefits.

After all, Trump only talks about the cryptocurrency industry for votes. Has he really seriously 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 encryption market. In Trump's eyes, the cryptocurrency market may be no different from him setting up a stall in front of his house. As long as someone is willing to pay for his influence, he will feel that there is something wrong with his behavior and there is nothing wrong with it. Woolen cloth?

The issuance of coins by Trump’s 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 of course a prosperous era of speculation, and there is no more perfect narrative and sense of pushback 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.