President-elect Donald Trump entered the world of cryptocurrency for the first time with the launch of Meme Coin Coin on the Solana platform called Official Trump (TRUMP).
While the launch generated significant trading activity, it also raised questions about legality, attribution, and potential security risks.
Trump’s ‘Official’ Meme Coin
On January 18, Trump announced the launch of Meme Coin TRUMP on his official X and Truth Social accounts.
“Trump’s New Official Meme Coin Has Arrived! It’s time to celebrate all we stand for: WINNING! Join my very special Trump Community,” President-elect write on X.
This meme coin, as detailed on its website, was inspired by Trump’s escape from an assassination attempt scheduled for July 13, 2024, during his election campaign. The image on the Token’s website depicts Trump with a raised fist and the slogan “Fight, Fight, Fight,” representing his actions on that day.
“This Trump Meme Coin celebrates a leader who never backed down, no matter the odds,” according to a statement on the website.
The project’s website describes tokenomics with a total supply of 1 billion tokens to be unlocked over three years. Currently, there are 200 million Tokens available for trading, with only 20% reserved for public trading and liquidity.
The remaining 80% is allocated to six groups, including CIC Digital Groups, a company owned by Trump’s trust that has managed his NFT projects.
Cryptocurrency Expert Issues Warning About Trump’s Meme Coin
The Token launch has caused a wave of interest and concern in the cryptocurrency community.
Conor Grogan from Coinbase warned that the concentration of Token ownership is a worrying sign. He noted that 80% of the Token supply — worth $3 billion — is locked in a multi-signature wallet controlled by the creator.
Furthermore, the top five wallets hold more than 90% of the circulating supply, raising concerns about possible price manipulation.
Blockchain analysis firm SpotOnChain also pointed out unusual patterns. The project received initial funding in SOL from Gate.io and Binance but has avoided major US exchanges such as Coinbase. This discrepancy has raised further doubts about the Token’s authenticity and intent.
“On-chain data reveals that the Token owner is 5e2qRc, sponsored by DKbF4. Notably, this address received SOL from Gate.io 2 days ago and from Binance 10 days ago,” SpotOnChain report.
There are also concerns about the possibility of hacking as social media security breaches become more common. However, data from Polymarket shows there is only a 10% chance that Trump’s account was hacked.
Adding to the confusion, Trump’s Truth Social account shared unrelated updates, like the appointment of Peggy Schwinn as Deputy Secretary of Education, shortly after the Meme Coin announcement.
Furthermore, blockchain engineer Cygaar pointed out that the technical infrastructure of the Meme Coin website is nearly identical to Trump’s previous NFT projects, suggesting it likely uses the same development team.
“Trump’s new Meme Coin site is implemented almost identically to the previous NFT site. Same cloudflare setup, same deployment with Heroku, same SSL certificate provider. The HTML structure is very similar to before,” Cygaar pointed out.
Despite much skepticism, TRUMP has seen huge market activity. According to Dexscreenerthe token has increased nearly 3,000% since launch, trading at $13.23 at press time.
This boom has pushed FDV to 13 billion USD, with transaction volume reaching hundreds of millions. Major exchanges, including Bybit and Jupiter, have announced they will list TRUMP.