According to estimates from blockchain analytics platform Arkham Intelligence, ‘crypto president’ Donald Trump has become $28 billion richer overnight, thanks to the TRUMP meme coin, which brought a 400% increase in his estimated net worth.
At $28 per token, and with Trump-affiliated companies CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight Fight LLC controlling 80% of the supply, the value of his crypto holdings alone has soared to $22.4 billion. For context, Forbes last valued Trump at $5.6 billion last November.
TRUMP traded at just $7 per token at launch but skyrocketed within hours, achieving a fully diluted valuation of $27 billion. This all comes less than 48 hours before Trump’s inauguration.
Only 200 million tokens are currently circulating, but there’s a plan to expand this to 1 billion over the next three years, as per the token’s official website.
The timing of the launch has drawn intense scrutiny. A US president-elect releasing a business product days before taking office is quite literally unheard of. At an unofficial crypto inaugural ball Friday night, Trump’s crypto and AI czar, David Sacks, promised that: “The reign of terror against crypto is over. Innovation in America for crypto has just begun.”
Meanwhile, crypto companies have donated over $10 million to Trump’s inauguration, after donating over $300 million to him during the campaign.
What critics are worried about
But of course some people are not happy about any of this. Admittedly, TRUMP does blur the lines between his presidency and personal profit. But hey, this is Donald Trump. When has he ever followed rules?
“It’s absolutely wild,” said Jordan Libowitz, vice president for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “Presidents-elect usually spend this time separating themselves from their finances. Trump is doing the opposite—launching a business and promising deregulation in ways that blatantly benefit him.”
Anthony Scaramucci, once Trump’s communications director and now a crypto investor, slammed the launch on X, calling it “Idi Amin-level corruption.” He added, “Don’t delude yourself. This is bad for the industry.”
Nick Tomaino, a venture capitalist and former Coinbase executive, warned that the level of ownership in TRUMP could harm smaller investors. “Trump owning 80% and timing the launch hours before inauguration is predatory, and many will likely get hurt by it,” he posted on social media.
Blockchain data backs up these concerns. As was reported by Cryptopolitan, analyst Conor has revealed that Trump’s team has already offloaded $500 million worth of tokens. Transactions show $20 million worth of TRUMP tokens being sent to Bybit within seven hours of the launch.
Most of the USDC reserves tied to these transactions were funneled into liquidity pools on Meteora, consolidating Trump’s position even more.
The official TRUMP website has a disclaimer that the token is “not an investment opportunity, investment contract, or security.”
Meanwhile, Solana saw a 16% price surge in the 24 hours following the TRUMP launch on its network, hitting an intraday high of 23%. According to CoinGecko data, this is Solana’s most profitable day of the year so far, despite Ethereum taking a 7% hit during the same period.
