At its peak over the weekend, the Official Trump memecoin (TRUMP) looked unstoppable, but it took only one whale selling to cause the first 50% drawdown. The implicated whale address had been previously tagged for early buying.
According to data shared by Bubblemaps, one single whale may have been the cause of the 50% TRUMP drawdown that sent ripples throughout the market. The on-chain analytics firm detected one address involved in early accumulation before it split all its holdings into 10 new wallets.
The cluster of wallets already realized $85M in gains, and they still hold another $75M worth of the tokens. At this point, it is uncertain if the buying and selling was coordinated, or if it was the usual activity of experienced meme snipers.
BIG UPDATE:
our trader sold $85M and still holds $75M of $TRUMP
he dumped right after Melania’s post, causing the -50% price drop https://t.co/MVwW3bntua pic.twitter.com/b24gXVJ69R
— Bubblemaps (@bubblemaps) January 20, 2025
The selling may be the main cause behind TRUMP’s slide from over $72 to the $40 range, with a deeper slide on some trading pairs. It recovered from the drawdown as market optimism boosted Bitcoin (BTC) to a new all-time high.
Whale wallet sparks doubts about insider activity
TRUMP is still a highly centralized meme token, with 80% of the supply still in the team’s main wallet. Bubblemaps drew attention to the possibility of some whales having additional inside knowledge to snipe the token that launched unexpectedly.
The original sniping address sent all TRUMP funds to ff.sol as an intermediary wallet. From there, the tokens were distributed across 10 addresses, which mostly liquidated their holdings. One of the addresses rolled over its funds into MELANIA soon after liquidating.
The initial buyer address was funded with USDC a couple of days ago, and it has no previous history of trading memes. The intermediary wallet was funded by ff.sol, then sent back TRUMP to the original address, which continued the selling.
One intermediary address became highly active in the first hours of the TRUMP token launch. | Source: Solscan
Activity from ff.sol was noted early, even before realizing the TRUMP token was a legitimate asset.
Initially, social media users believed Donald Trump’s social media had been hacked, which is not an unusual occurrence. However, early token sniping and the confidence of known wallets within the Solana ecosystem became early indications of privileged information.
After the launch of TRUMP, the wallet showed increased activity, tapping into the new trend of related PolitiFi tokens. The wallet rolled over into TRUTH, FIGHT, and VOX POPULI, though not with the plan to hold for the long term. Instead, the whale bought early and sold for USDC, moving on to the next launch.
The whale’s behavior sparked speculations about insider knowledge, due to the preparation to snipe the token a minute after its launch. The presence of actively trading whales tests the status of TRUMP as a potential cult meme token, which is mostly held by the community.
Instead, the price action of TRUMP may feel the effect of large-scale wallets trading rapidly. Some of the TRUMP received by the early buyer wallet was sent to addresses with a track record of flipping meme tokens from previous trends. All the wallets listed by Bubblemaps had different selling strategies and achieved varied end results when locking profits.
Did Solana insiders know about Trump’s intentions?
The launch of TRUMP did not go through the usual channels and was probably planned for a while. This led to suspicions that representatives of the Solana ecosystem knew about the launch and even the deployment of the token’s smart contract.
One of the early addresses that traded TRUMP held a string that suggested it may belong to a Solana insider. The vanity address, listed as meowthLT61GwsPZCfdRcNXwSDPp1p6bNRM7PRnYHw3z, was suspected to belong to the founder of Jupiter DEX aggregator, @weremeow. The same address was also connected to sniping HAWK, the meme token of Hailey Welch.
Other wallets like Shatter.sol also had large unrealized profits from sniping TRUMP early. They were also connected to the initial trading of HAWK. Both Shatter.sol and goofyaahh.sol are suspected to be owned by the same person controlling ff.sol, and related to a trader or a group of traders.
The Shatter.sol wallet has been known to send funds to new Solana addresses with the intention of sniping tokens soon after launch. Previously, Shatter.sol also sniped and sold BONK.
Some of the techniques used to grab coins early was to send multiple failed transactions to a contract, to make sure an early buy would be possible.
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