TRUMP, MELANIA Memecoins Made Millions for Some, Less Than $100 for Many
Donald Trump’s official memecoin has been extremely profitable for early buyers and likely unprofitable for many, a Chainalysis finding shows.
An estimated 60 whales — a colloquial term for influential token holders — have realized profits exceeding $10 million each. However, a majority of retail investors were at break-even as of Thursday.
“After 1B $TRUMP tokens were minted, 4 wallets received most of the funds to hold or provide liquidity to exchanges,” Chainalysis said. “Most wallets that hold $TRUMP and/or $MELANIA hold less than $100 worth, suggesting retail buying activity.”
An analysis of wallets showed 77% of TRUMP holders earned less than $100, with over 80% of TRUMP or MELANIA holders likely to be investors who held less than $1,000 worth of assets on the Solana blockchain.
Some 50% of those token holders were likely first-time Solana-based token buyers — meaning TRUMP helped attract newcomers to the overall market. On the other hand, around forty whales holding over $10 million of both tokens accounted for an estimated 94% of overall token possession.
4/8 Further suggesting 🤳retail popularity, over 80% of $TRUMP and/or $MELANIA holders are investors who hold less than $1k worth of assets on Solana. pic.twitter.com/RhtukiqV0F
— Chainalysis (@chainalysis) January 23, 2025
TRUMP prices are down 7% in the past 24 hours, while MELANIA tokens are down 10% as initial hype around the two official memecoins appears to be dying out.
Trump issued his official memecoin before his Monday swearing-in ceremony, where prices rocketed from a few cents to $14 in less than six hours. The token attracted $3 billion in volumes hours after going live and netted early buyers over $70 million in paper gains, as CoinDesk noted.
