‘It was a pump and Trump’: Donald Trump’s meme coin plummets 80% in value, costing his supporters billions

Hardly anyone expects Donald Trump, a man who’s experienced six bankruptcies, to be good with money, but that still didn’t stop his supporters from making the biggest financial mistake of their lives.

Just three days ahead of his second inauguration, a meme coin specifically themed around Trump — $TRUMP — launched to mass interest from a very specific subset of the American populace. It was soon followed by a Melania-themed coin (also sporting an extremely creative name) and within hours, both were worth billions.

The launch of both meme coins took the cryptocurrency community by storm, even as $TRUMP in particular faced waves of warranted pushback. The coin, and most vitally Trump’s connection to it, courted widespread condemnation from ethics experts, who criticized the clear conflict of interest it posed. Those criticisms fell on predictably deaf ears, unfortunately, which left $TRUMP to skyrocket in value.

For a few weeks, at least. Now that it’s been more than a month since the meme coin launched, it’s starting to lose value — and fast. For tens of thousands of American citizens who invested in the Trump coin, reality is crashing down. For everyone else, this outcome is expected.

In the immediate aftermath of $TRUMP’s launch on Jan. 17, 2025, the coin’s value skyrocketed. An estimated 500 people — maybe even more — reportedly became millionaires overnight, but their new status was destined to be short-lived. The value of $TRUMP took an almost immediate hit when $MELANIA launched just two days later, on Jan. 19. It then continued to lose value as Trump flailed his way through the first weeks of his second term, until it bottomed out just over a month after its launch.

The same happened to $MELANIA, the value of which has plummeted over the last few weeks. Estimates indicate that someone who invested $10,000 in $MELANIA at launch are looking at a value less than $700 now, and those are the lucky ones.

The people who invested in $TRUMP may be poised to lose even more, as the value of the coin completely collapses in on itself. Presently, the coin is estimated to have lost around 80% of its value, but that number continues to rise each day. The coin’s biggest plummet happened in late February, when it dropped from its original $15 billion value to a measly $2.7 billion. It’s lost a whopping $12 billion in the time since its launch, costing investors massively.

Trump, after years of criticizing Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, had an about-face midway through his third presidential run. He suddenly became the crypto candidate, netting him some serious returns. While his own investments into the $TRUMP coin also hemorrhaged cash, it’s still assumed that the president will capitalize on its launch.

The abrupt devaluation of the $TRUMP coin urged some analysts — and plenty of private investors — to label the scheme as a “pump and dump,” or, more fittingly, a “pump and Trump.” That references schemes in which the value of something is massively inflated to promote sales, only to have the product metaphorically “dumped,” and see its value plummet.

Which lands a good 800,000 people in a terrible situation, even as the same folks who created this nightmare capitalize on their bad decisions. A New York Times analysis found that 813,294 wallets lost a full $2 billion thanks to $TRUMP, even as the man behind the curtain raked in millions.