Did Donald Trump Really Just Drop a Solana Meme Coin?

Speak about a Friday night time shock. President-elect Donald Trump’s social media accounts shared what seems to be an official Solana meme coin known as TRUMP, simply three days earlier than he is set to be sworn in for his second time period within the White Home.

Degen merchants purchased in instantly, producing lots of of tens of millions of {dollars}’ value of buying and selling quantity as on-chain sleuths and safety specialists hunted for crimson flags. However with Trump’s X and Fact Social posts nonetheless stay after greater than an hour, and a few preliminary crimson flags cleared upon nearer inspection, it seems that this can be a respectable Trump meme coin launch.

“My NEW Official Trump Meme is HERE! It’s time to rejoice every thing we stand for: WINNING! Be a part of my very particular Trump Group. GET YOUR $TRUMP NOW,” Trump’s official X account posted.

The launch was instantly met with pleasure, confusion, and loads of skepticism. That is as a result of the venture had all of the acquainted hallmarks of many celeb meme coin scams which have launched during the last 12 months, with a public determine’s social media account hijacked to advertise a pump-and-dump rip-off.

The Fact Social publish went out first, however as soon as the X publish adopted on his official account, issues started to subside. Additionally, the coin has principally solely pumped to date, with no dump as of this writing.

On-chain sleuths pointed to potential crimson flags, together with the obvious incontrovertible fact that the venture was seeded with tens of millions of {dollars} of funds from Binance and Gate—two exchanges that do not serve U.S. clients. However another obvious issues diminished with additional sleuthing, to not point out with time as Trump’s social posts remained on-line.

The coin’s official website seems to be just like these used to promote and promote his previous NFT collections, and is credited to CIC Digital, the identical official Trump licensee behind the NFTs. The meme coin web site was “deployed nearly identically to his earlier NFT web site,” famous pseudonymous blockchain engineer cygaar tweeted, following preliminary suspicions.

“Both that is the best cyber heist of all time, or that is respectable,” he added.

Meme coin merchants are shopping for the coin in droves, pushing it to a worth of $7.31 as of this writing. DexScreener lists a market cap of $7.1 billion, which might make it a high 30 cryptocurrency if correct—although there is a caveat.

Out of 1 billion cash, the web site notes that 80% are locked and can steadily be unlocked over the course of three years. As such, the circulating provide would solely be 200 million tokens, placing the market cap nearer to $1.5 billion as of this writing. There’s been about $680 million value of buying and selling quantity to date.

Trump ran on a pro-crypto platform, and past his earlier NFT collections that launched between 2022 and 2024, Trump has additionally backed a decentralized finance platform known as World Liberty Monetary.

He is anticipated to concern a day-one govt order concerning cryptocurrency that might be the primary of many, as Decrypt reported this week, with Trump believed to be readying directives that might reshape the American crypto panorama for builders and buyers alike.