Melania Trump's memecoin linked to $100M in suspicious trading: report
Investors made nearly $100 million by buying Melania Trump's cryptocurrency token minutes before she announced the coins were for sale.
The first lady publicized the $MELANIA coin in a Truth Social post on Jan. 19, hours before her husband was inaugurated for a second term as president, and two dozen digital wallets bought $2.6 million of the tokens in the two and a half minutes before her post went live, reported the Financial Times.
Prices for the tokens took off after Melania Trump announced the cryptocurrency, and the wallets in which they'd been deposited quickly sold off most of their coins, with 81 percent of those transactions taking place within 12 hours.
One wallet spent $681,000 on the memecoin in a single transaction 64 seconds before the public announcement, and that account made $39 million from selling most of its holdings within 24 hours. That wallet made another $4.4 million from selling the rest in the next three days.
Two dozen accounts bought up to 16.7 million of all the 200 million $MELANIA tokens available during the launch period, and another 22 accounts purchased about $900,000 worth of tokens in the 42 seconds after launch.
The $MELANIA memecoin has no function beyond being a vehicle for speculation, with early buyers having an opportunity to make enormous profits if interest surges. It was launched about two days after the president-to-be launched his own $TRUMP token.
The Financial Times analyzed purchases of the $MELANIA tokens and found the entities which launched the coins, which are separate from the wallets that trade in it before the first lady's announcement, have raked in $64.7 million in profits from fees and primary sales.
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Texas-based crypto entrepreneur Hayden Davis, who was also involved in the launch of the $LIBRA memecoin briefly endorsed by Argentinian president Javier Milei, has said he was involved in the launch of $MELANIA, and FT confirmed the first wallet to buy the tokens ahead of the launch was funded by an account that was previously used in ventures involving the 28-year-old investor – who denied speculating in the coins.
“There was no money made from the Melania team," Davis told the Coffeezilla website. "We didn’t take any liquidity out. Zero.”
The first account, which FT potentially linked to Davis, bought $40,000 of $MELANIA 141 seconds prior to launch and went on to sell 86 percent of its holdings within two hours, which came to profits of $2.5 million.