$TRUMP Insiders made $100 million on Melania Trump's meme coin, buying it minutes before the announcement. 58 crypto wallets made millions on Trump's meme coin, while 764,000 lost money.
The Financial Times revealed signs of insider trading in the meme coin MELANIA, which Melania Trump announced on her social media in January. According to the publication, 24 wallets purchased tokens worth $2.6 million just 2.5 minutes before her posts. This allowed them to make a profit of $99.6 million, most of which they realized within 12 hours after the announcement. Since the launch, the token has lost more than 90%, and the price has never recovered.
One of the wallets invested $681,000 just a minute before the posts appeared and sold most of it in the following day, earning $39 million. According to Bubblemaps, this wallet was linked to entrepreneur Hayden Davis, who had previously been involved in other controversial meme coin launches, including LIBRA, which was promoted by the president of Argentina, Javier Milei. Davis himself stated in media comments that the MELANIA team 'did not receive a dollar in profit.' FT notes that the project's organizers withdrew at least $64.7 million from primary sales and fees in liquidity pools.
The investigation also shows that 22 other wallets purchased tokens in the first seconds after the announcement, spending a total of about $900,000. According to FT, $99.6 million is the minimum estimated profit: only pre-announcement purchases were considered.
