Donald Trump and his team have been accused of operating a “pump and dump scheme” after a series of memecoin launches added billions of dollars to the net worth of the future US president and first lady.
A day after Trump’s own brand, the official TRUMP token, was launched and soared to a market capitalization of $15 billion, Trump’s wife Melania has launched her own memecoin. This led critics to accuse the family of inappropriate behavior.
“If you thought the massive success of $TRUMP would make Trump greedy, you were right,” said Jim Bianco, president of Bianco Research, on January 19 after Mrs. Trump’s token was launched.
“He tried to double in value with $MELANIA, but the market thinks that’s a form of dilution and assumes/fears that Trump has tons of other coins ahead.”
Within hours of his wife’s token being launched, TRUMP tokens fell 38%. MELANIA hit a peak valuation of more than $13 billion within four hours of launch on January 19, before nearly halving to $7.3 billion.
Phinance Technologies founder Edward Dowd responded to TRUMP’s price drop by saying of
We are witnessing the largest unforced error to occur before a presidential inauguration… I can’t believe it. https://t.co/hdj0hkoubv
— Edward Dowd (@DowdEdward) January 19, 2025
Financial analyst Michael A. Gayed described TRUMP as a “pump and dump” scheme, saying Trump’s credibility in
“From what I’ve read, the insiders who helped launch $TRUMP didn’t realize how big it would do, and either didn’t buy enough or sold too early,” Delphi Labs co-founder José Maria Macedo wrote in a Jan. 19 X post. .
“They rushed to run it again with $MELANIA and make sure they filled the bag this time,” he added. “They developed $30 billion worth of nuclear weapons out of greed, turned optics into pure fraud, and probably committed numerous crimes as well.”
The MELANIA memecoin launch comes amid a slump in cryptocurrency markets, with the price of Bitcoin (BTC) falling nearly 6% from $105,900 to below $99,650, TradingView data shows.
Crypto token price movements over the last 24 hours. source: cryptocurrency bubble
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Ryan Selkis, a Trump supporter and former CEO of cryptocurrency research firm Messari, recommended the president-elect, who launched the Melania memecoin, as a ‘bull’. They claimed they “don’t know what they’re doing” and aren’t doing Trump’s best. We have your interests in mind.
Despite the criticism, MELANIA and TRUMP have attracted the attention of traders among the tokens so far, and the combined market cap of the two tokens now stands at over $16 billion.
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