Did Donald Trump Really Just Drop a Solana Meme Coin?

Discuss a Friday night time shock. President-elect Donald Trump’s social media accounts shared what seems to be an official Solana meme coin known as TRUMP, simply three days earlier than he is set to be sworn in for his second time period within the White Home.
Degen merchants purchased in instantly, producing a whole lot of tens of millions of {dollars}’ price of buying and selling quantity as on-chain sleuths and safety consultants hunted for pink flags. However with Trump’s X and Fact Social posts nonetheless reside after greater than an hour, and a few preliminary pink flags cleared upon nearer inspection, it seems that this can be a official Trump meme coin launch.
“My NEW Official Trump Meme is HERE! It’s time to have a good time all the things we stand for: WINNING! Be a part of my very particular Trump Group. GET YOUR $TRUMP NOW,” Trump’s official X account posted.
My NEW Official Trump Meme is HERE! It’s time to have a good time all the things we stand for: WINNING! Be a part of my very particular Trump Group. GET YOUR $TRUMP NOW. Go to https://t.co/GX3ZxT5xyq — Have Enjoyable! pic.twitter.com/flIKYyfBrC
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2025
The launch was instantly met with pleasure, confusion, and loads of skepticism. That is as a result of the undertaking had all of the acquainted hallmarks of many celeb meme coin scams which have launched during the last yr, with a public determine’s social media account hijacked to advertise a pump-and-dump rip-off.
The Fact Social publish went out first, however as soon as the X publish adopted on his official account, issues started to subside. Additionally, the coin has largely solely pumped to date, with no dump as of this writing.
Trump nonetheless could possibly be going by means of a 3rd occasion to create/handle. In that case, he ought to use US exchanges. We have now good cash, one of the best cash
— Conor (@jconorgrogan) January 18, 2025
On-chain sleuths pointed to potential pink flags, together with the obvious undeniable fact that the undertaking was seeded with tens of millions of {dollars} of funds from Binance and Gate—two exchanges that do not serve U.S. clients. However another obvious issues diminished with additional sleuthing, to not point out with time as Trump’s social posts remained on-line.
The coin’s official web site appears just like these used to promote and promote his previous NFT collections, and is credited to CIC Digital, the identical official Trump licensee behind the NFTs. The meme coin web site was “deployed virtually identically to his earlier NFT web site,” famous pseudonymous blockchain engineer cygaar tweeted, following preliminary suspicions.
“Both that is the best cyber heist of all time, or that is official,” he added.
The truth that each deployments are utilizing Heroku actually leads me to imagine that this is identical deployer lmao.
Solely outdated heads from a decade in the past use Heroku for web site deployments.
Both that is the best cyber heist of all time, or that is official.
— cygaar (@0xCygaar) January 18, 2025
Meme coin merchants are shopping for the coin in droves, pushing it to a worth of $7.31 as of this writing. DexScreener lists a market cap of $7.1 billion, which might make it a prime 30 cryptocurrency if correct—although there is a caveat.
Out of 1 billion cash, the web site notes that 80% are locked and can regularly be unlocked over the course of three years. As such, the circulating provide would solely be 200 million tokens, placing the market cap nearer to $1.5 billion as of this writing. There’s been about $680 million price of buying and selling quantity to date.
Trump ran on a pro-crypto platform, and past his earlier NFT collections that launched between 2022 and 2024, Trump has additionally backed a decentralized finance platform known as World Liberty Monetary.
He is anticipated to challenge a day-one govt order concerning cryptocurrency that could possibly be the primary of many, as Decrypt reported this week, with Trump believed to be readying directives that would reshape the American crypto panorama for builders and traders alike.