“Official” Trump Meme Coin Nears $10B Market Cap in 3 Hours, But Investors Remain Cautious

Donald Trump reportedly launches an “official” Trump meme coin with the ticker TRUMP, but investors remain cautious despite short-term success. 

President-elect Donald Trump launched the Solana-based token three days before his inauguration as the 47th president of the United States. Despite its explosive rise in value, skepticism surrounds the project, with investors questioning its authenticity.

TRUMP’s Meteoric Rise  

Within three hours of its launch, TRUMP’s market cap has skyrocketed to $9 billion. The token’s price jumped over 4,800%, trading at $9 from an opening price of $0.1824, according to Dexscreener. Over 49,800 buyers joined the frenzy, outpacing the nearly 12,500 sellers. Liquidity also surged, reaching $308.7 million.  

Notably, SpotOnChain revealed the token initially received funding in SOL from Gate.io and Binance. However, the blockchain analytics firm questioned why a U.S.-based project avoided American exchanges like Coinbase.  

TRUMP Allocation Raises Concerns  

The allocation of TRUMP tokens has raised red flags. Conor Grogan, a Coinbase director, highlighted that 80% of the token supply is locked in a multisignature wallet. This amounts to $3 billion, controlled by the creator, who also added $40 million in liquidity.  

Trump memecoin creator added $40M in single-sided liquidity and deposited 80% of supply into a multisig pic.twitter.com/oKxOtiF50D

— Conor (@jconorgrogan) January 18, 2025

The official website “GetTrumpMemes” outlines the token’s distribution plan. According to the platform, there are 200 million tokens in circulation on day one, with a plan to increase this figure to 1 billion over three years.

However, 80% of the circulating supply is allocated to Fight Fight Fight LLC and CIC Digital LLC, both linked to The Trump Organization. Meanwhile, public investors and liquidity share only 20% of the supply equally.

A Possible Hack?

Skepticism about the token’s legitimacy has spread across the crypto community. Trump made the announcement on his official Truth Social and Twitter accounts. 

My NEW Official Trump Meme is HERE! It’s time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING! Join my very special Trump Community. GET YOUR $TRUMP NOW. Go to https://t.co/GX3ZxT5xyq — Have Fun! pic.twitter.com/flIKYyfBrC

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2025

However, concerns about a possible hack have or a social engineering scheme has surfaced. Despite these emerging concerns, Polymarket data indicates only a 10% chance that his accounts were compromised.

Trump just launched a memecoin, $TRUMP.

There’s only a 10% chance he was hacked. pic.twitter.com/rqvLsHLZBD

— Polymarket (@Polymarket) January 18, 2025

Blockchain data reveals the token owner’s wallet received funds from Gate.io two days prior to the launch and Binance ten days earlier. 

In addition, the token’s concentration of ownership among a few wallets raises concerns about manipulation. The top five holders own over 90% of the supply, making it vulnerable to sudden price swings if any of these addresses sell their holdings.  

It bears mentioning that during Trump’s 2024 campaign, World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a project inspired by the President-elect, launched. Unlike $TRUMP, WLFI was not a meme coin, and its intentions were more transparent.

Nonetheless, the token has so far reached a $10 billion market cap and has continued to trade for 3 hours without any official statements from Trump or his team to dissociate the president-elect. This has bolstered investor confidence that the token might actually be official. However, at press time, this remains uncertain.