Trump’s coin plunges 40% after his wife drops MELANIA meme token

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Key Takeaways

The meme token associated with Donald Trump plummeted more than 40% on the launch of Melania Trump’s MELANIA token.
MELANIA, based on Solana, reached a $10 billion valuation within three hours of launch.

TRUMP, the official meme coin of President-elect Donald Trump, lost over 40% of its value after Melania Trump dropped her own meme coin, MELANIA.

Trump’s meme token traded at around $72 on Sunday and dropped below $39 Sunday evening, CoinGecko data shows. The sell-off wiped out $6 billion of its market value, which peaked at approximately $14.5 billion during the day.

The recent price drop knocked it out of the top two meme coins by market cap, as Shiba Inu (SHIB) surged back into second position. Earlier today, TRUMP overtook both SHIB and PEPE, entering the top tier of meme coin rankings.

The token is currently valued at around $46, reflecting a 68% increase over the past 24 hours.

Melania unveiled the MELANIA token on Truth Social and X, which was widely perceived as legitimate after Trump retweeted the announcement.

The Solana-based meme coin swiftly achieved a valuation of $12 billion in less than three hours of launch, according to data from Dexscreener.

Information from the project’s official website reads that it will allocate 35% to the team, 20% each to treasury and community, 15% to the public, and 10% to liquidity.

Trump's coin plunges 40% after his wife drops MELANIA meme token

According to Bubblemaps, 89% of the token supply was initially owned by one wallet before being split into four, which did not match information on the site.

UPDATE:

the original 89% address (GtdNP) has been split into four main wallets holding 30%, 30%, 20%, and 6%

check the map below for LIVE updates ↓ pic.twitter.com/YrwOU4qWkY

— Bubblemaps (@bubblemaps) January 19, 2025

Poor development

Blockchain experts suggest Official Trump and Melania Memes are separate projects launched by different teams with no coordination.

Conor Grogan, head of product business operations at Coinbase, stated that the wallet handling the creation of Melania Trump’s token had previously been active on the memecoin launchpad Pump.fun and was not a multisignature wallet, unlike the one used for Donald Trump’s token.

He expressed his opinion on X, suggesting that the team behind Melania’s token appeared less professional compared to those managing Donald Trump’s token.

This Melania coin which launched a few minutes ago (and is worth a few billion) appears to be structured differently than TRUMP.

Creator wallet was funded by a wallet that traded on PumpFun, and there is no sign of a multisig (Trump had one setup pre-launch) pic.twitter.com/RZjS0sTiCS

— Conor (@jconorgrogan) January 19, 2025

Blockchain engineer Cygaar suggested that MELANIA was created out of an attempt to “grift,” noting that the website associated with the token was poorly constructed and lacked adequate security measures. In comparison, the Official Trump website was done properly.

So this Melania meme site was setup yesterday, has no cloudflare protection, and has some half-assed frontend code.

So yeah, people are definitely grifting here. At least the Trump coin was planned weeks in advance. pic.twitter.com/hCMvwcgWEZ

— cygaar (@0xCygaar) January 19, 2025

The launch has also faced intense backlash from crypto community members. Some said they wanted SEC Chair Gary Gensler back.

Legit generational rug and fumble by Trump

80% of $75bn FDV would be top 25 richest in the world

Gone because needed to launch a new grift for his wife on crime chain

— eric.eth (@econoar) January 19, 2025