Propose an edit: Official Trump coin launch

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Title Category One sentence summary Infobox, one "key: value" per line Article body, markdown, use [[wiki links]] and end with a ## References section

The **Official Trump coin launch** was the release of [[Official Trump]] (TRUMP), a [[meme coin]] on [[Solana]], on January 17, 2025, three days before Donald Trump's second inauguration as United States president. The launch produced the most intense weekend of activity in Solana's history, briefly made a sitting president elect the issuer of the world's most traded meme coin, and became, in the assessment of much later reporting, one of the largest concentrated retail losses of the [[the trenches|trenches]] era.

## Launch weekend

Trump announced the token on his social media accounts on the evening of January 17, 2025; the claim was initially so implausible that much of [[crypto twitter]] assumed his accounts had been hacked. The token launched around 0.40 dollars and reached an all time high of about 73 to 75 dollars on January 19, a fully diluted valuation in the tens of billions. Per Helius, more than 10 percent of Solana's cumulative all time DEX volume occurred in the seven days around the launch, with record single day DEX volumes of 28.2 billion dollars on January 19 and 39.2 billion dollars on January 20. SOL itself hit an all time high of 293.31 dollars on January 19, and CoinDesk reported Solana's stablecoin supply surged past 10 billion dollars as capital flooded in. On January 19, Melania Trump launched her own MELANIA token, an event traders associated with the moment TRUMP's price broke; both tokens fell steeply from that point.

## Structure and criticism

Eighty percent of the 1 billion token supply was retained by Trump affiliated entities, CIC Digital and Fight Fight Fight LLC, subject to a three year unlock schedule, with the issuers also earning trading fees on every transaction. Ethics lawyers and Democratic lawmakers argued the structure let anyone, including foreign nationals, transfer value to a sitting president anonymously; the White House denied conflicts of interest. Criticism sharpened in May 2025 when the top 220 holders were invited to a private dinner with Trump at his Virginia golf club on May 22; CNBC reported buyers spent an estimated 148 million dollars accumulating positions for access, and that most top holders appeared to be based outside the United States. The announcement itself rallied the token about 50 percent.

## Aftermath and 2026 developments

TRUMP entered a prolonged decline after the launch weekend. The first insider cliff unlock on April 19, 2025 released 40 million tokens worth about 311 million dollars at the time, followed by daily unlocks and a further cliff on January 18, 2026. By mid 2026 the token traded around 1.70 dollars, more than 95 percent below its peak. In July 2026, CNN Business reported that Trump linked entities had made more than 1 billion dollars from his crypto ventures, with roughly 636 million dollars in fees and royalties attributed to the TRUMP token, while blockchain data showed nearly one million wallets had lost a combined 3.81 billion dollars on the coin. Newsweek calculated that 10,000 dollars invested on inauguration day was worth about 364 dollars by July 1, 2026.

## Significance

The launch legitimized political meme coins for roughly four weeks, until the [[LIBRA scandal]] inverted the narrative. Within the trenches it is remembered as the top of the 2024 to 2025 cycle: the weekend that drained liquidity from the rest of the meme coin market, brought tens of millions of newcomers into contact with Solana, and demonstrated that attention at presidential scale obeys the same extraction mechanics as any [[pump.fun]] launch.

## References

* CNBC, Solana surges on launch of Trump themed meme coin: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/18/crypto-market-today.html
* Helius, TRUMP's historic weekend on Solana: https://www.helius.dev/blog/trump-solana-memecoin-records-trends-insights
* CoinDesk, Trump token frenzy drives Solana stablecoin supply to 10 billion dollars and record DEX volumes: https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/01/24/trump-token-frenzy-drives-solana-stablecoin-supply-to-usd10b-record-dex-volumes
* TRM Labs, Tracing TRUMP: https://www.trmlabs.com/resources/blog/tracing-trump
* CNBC, Trump coin dinner to include mostly non Americans based on top holders: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/18/trump-coin-dinner-to-include-mostly-non-americans-based-on-top-holders.html
* NPR, White House denies conflicts of interest as Trump joins dinner for meme coin investors: https://www.npr.org/2025/05/22/nx-s1-5407411/white-house-denies-conflicts-of-interest-as-trump-joins-dinner-for-meme-coin-investors
* Datawallet, TRUMP meme coin tokenomics and unlocks: https://www.datawallet.com/crypto/trump-meme-coin-explained
* CNN Business, How Trump made more than 1 billion dollars on crypto while most of his coin's investors lost money: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/02/business/trump-memecoin-crypto-gains
* Newsweek, 10K investment in Trump crypto coin on inauguration day worth 364 dollars: https://www.newsweek.com/10k-investment-in-trump-crypto-coin-on-inauguration-day-worth-364-today-12150504

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