Trump Memecoin Implodes: 94% Collapse Wipes Out $2B as Insiders Net $427M
One year after launch, the $TRUMP token is down 94% from its highs, leaving 813,000 wallets underwater while issuers collected $427 million in fees.
The premium on political access has been repriced, and retail investors are paying the bill. One year after its frenzied launch, the official $TRUMP memecoin has completed a catastrophic 94% drawdown, obliterating approximately $2 billion in shareholder value while generating hundreds of millions in fees for the Trump Organization and its partners.
Trading data from CoinMarketCap confirms the token, which peaked at $75.35 shortly after its January 2025 debut, is currently struggling to hold the $4.80 level. The collapse has left a blast radius of 813,294 underwater wallets, according to on-chain data cited in a new Financial Times investigation.
The Wealth Extraction Ratio
The discrepancy between insider profit and retail loss is stark. While early buyers faced a total wipeout, the Financial Times reported this week that the Trump family’s crypto ventures, including $TRUMP and the $MELANIA token, generated an estimated $427 million in revenue from sales and trading fees.
Market analysts have dubbed this a “1:20 extraction event”: for every single dollar gained by the issuers in fees, retail investors lost twenty dollars in market value. This is not standard market volatility; it is a mechanical wealth transfer.
The token surged to $75.35 at its peak before collapsing to about $4-5, wiping out most of its market value in a year.
Institutional & Regulatory Blowback
The fallout has moved beyond bagholder discord into legislative territory. Governance watchdogs, including the Campaign for Accountability and the Project on Government Oversight, have formally petitioned the U.S. Senate. Their demand is specific: codify a ban on the President and senior officials from issuing or trading cryptocurrencies while in office.
The collapse of $TRUMP, and the 99% implosion of $MELANIA to $0.15, undercuts the narrative of “patriotic finance” pitched during the initial coin offerings. With the CLARITY Act already facing headwinds from industry giants like Coinbase, this retail disaster provides ammunition for regulators seeking tighter controls on issuer liability.
