Small Group of Traders Cash In Big on $TRUMP and $MELANIA Memecoins

Plus Democrats abandon a joint hearing on crypto policy to protest President Trump’s personal crypto dealings.

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Bruce Carton
May 07, 2025

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Traders made $100mn from buying Melania Trump memecoin before launch

A small group of traders earned a $99.6mn windfall by buying Melania Trump’s cryptocurrency token in the minutes before it was made public, an analysis by the Financial Times has found.

Melania Trump unveiled the $MELANIA coin in a social media post late on January 19, just hours before her husband was inaugurated as the US president.

In the two and a half minutes before her post went live on Truth Social, two dozen digital wallets bought $2.6mn of the tokens from the crypto marketplace where they had been deposited.

The traders profited when Melania Trump’s post sent the price of the tokens soaring. The wallets offloaded most of their coins rapidly, with 81 per cent of their sales taking place within 12 hours.

by FT

👉 Over at Money Stuff, Matt Levine writes:

The point of a memecoin is that for 15 minutes everyone in crypto coordinates to (1) pay attention to some person and (2) turn that attention into money by buying a token…..

Oh now obviously if people buy the coin before its public announcement, they will do even better than the people who buy it right after the public announcement. And one can guess that those people are insiders who are connected with the promoters of the memecoin. But of course those are the people who will make money! It’s their meme! You are paying money to buy a token representing “I paid attention to Melania Trump today.” Who should get that money, if not Melania Trump or whoever set up the coin for her?

58 crypto wallets have made millions on Trump’s meme coin while 764,000 have lost money, data shows

About 764,000 wallets that purchased President Donald Trump’s $TRUMP meme coin have lost money on the investment, according to fresh data shared with CNBC by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis.

Most of the wallets that lost money held smaller amounts of the token, according to the firm’s on-chain analysis. Crypto wallets are accounts that store the keys you need to access and use your cryptocurrency holdings.

Chainalysis said that while around 2 million wallets have bought into the token, 58 wallets made more than $10 million apiece, totaling roughly $1.1 billion in gains.

by NBC News

👉 On his LinkedIn, John Stark says, “don’t worry, the SEC Enforcement Division is investigating. Oh wait, the SEC has shut down its crypto-enforcement program and declared meme coins most akin to Beanie Babies, Pokémon cards and American Girl dolls.”

Planned Crypto Hearing in U.S. House Derailed by Democrat Revolt

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives derailed what was supposed to be a joint hearing on crypto policy efforts on Tuesday, insisting that President Donald Trump’s personal crypto dealings were too urgent to allow other discussion on instituting industry regulations.

“I object to this joint hearing because of the corruption of the president of the United States and his ownership of crypto and his oversight of all the agencies,” said Maxine Waters, the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, effectively robbing the gathering of its official status that required unanimous consent to proceed with the panel’s joint hearing alongside the House Agriculture Committee.

Waters issued an invitation for people to come join the Democrats in another room “to discuss what we should be discussing: Trump’s crypto corruption. […]

by CoinDesk

👉 The article adds that the effect of Democrats abandoning the hearing was that “two non-hearings progressed on Tuesday morning in separate rooms, illustrating the sharpening divide between the parties this week on how to move forward on overseeing the digital assets sector.”

New Hampshire Becomes First State to Approve Crypto Reserve Law

New Hampshire has become the first state to allow the investment of its public funds into crypto assets with its governor signing the new law on Tuesday.

The state beat a number of others to the punch this year as what had started as a surge in state lawmaker momentum had run into roadblocks over recent weeks. As the first to authorize its treasurer to set up such a reserve, New Hampshire could very well beat the U.S. government in forming a stockpile, too. 

by CoinDesk

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👉 In a press release, Frieght Technologies stated that “we believes that the addition of the Official Trump tokens are an excellent way to diversify our crypto treasury, and also an effective way to advocate for fair, balanced, and free trade between Mexico and the US.”