Veni, Vidi, Prendi
usapolitics.news Analytical Journalism
Reading time: 6 minutes
"I play to people's fantasies." — Donald Trump, The Art of the Deal, 1987
Three days before his inauguration, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social. "It's time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING!" he wrote. "Join my very special Trump community. GET YOUR $TRUMP NOW!" The post was not a policy announcement. It was not a press release. It was the language of a rally — the language his supporters had been hearing for nine years, the language that made them feel seen and included and part of something larger than themselves. They responded the way they always had. They showed up.
Nearly one million of them lost a combined $3.81 billion.
Trump made $1.4 billion.
The $TRUMP memecoin launched on January 17, 2025, three days before the inauguration. In its first hours the token traded under one dollar. By the time most retail buyers arrived — drawn by their president's repeated promotions on Truth Social — the price had spiked toward its peak of $75.35. They bought at the top. The token now trades at approximately $1.76, down 97%. The early buyers were insiders, crypto professionals, and people with advance information about the launch timing. They sold into the rally Trump's posts created. His supporters provided the exit liquidity. The alternative was available on the same day — an S&P 500 index fund bought on January 17, 2025 would be worth roughly 19% more today. The index requires no trust in any individual.
This was not an accident of the market. It was the structure of the instrument.
Of the one billion $TRUMP tokens created, 80% are held by two Trump-affiliated entities — CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight Fight LLC, both Trump Organisation affiliates. Those tokens are being released on a three-year unlock schedule, with roughly 900,000 tokens entering circulation daily. That unlock schedule means Trump-affiliated entities are selling into the market every single day, a permanent structural pressure on the price that every retail buyer paid. Trump also collected royalties on every transaction — he profited whether the price went up or down, whether his supporters made money or lost it. His financial disclosure, released June 30, 2026, lists $636 million in royalties from CIC Digital alone, part of a total crypto-related haul of at least $1.4 billion for 2025.
The mechanism guaranteed the outcome. The promotion supplied the buyers. The buyers supplied the money.
Nicholas Pinto did what his president told him to do. A frequent crypto trader who voted for Trump in 2024, Pinto told the New York Times he invested roughly $500,000 in the $TRUMP coin and has lost approximately half. "He is leveraging the power of being president to launch currencies, when he seems trustworthy in the public's eye," Pinto said. "It is kind of incredible. It is almost a legal scam." Pinto is not a naive first-time investor. He trades crypto regularly. He lost $250,000 because he trusted the man he voted for. While the coin was rising, Pinto never said a word. He was buying. The critique and the loss are the same event. That is not a coincidence — it is the design. The mechanism kept buyers in long enough for insiders to exit, then left them holding the loss and the language to describe it.
Pinto's phrase — almost a legal scam — is the most precise description available of what the $TRUMP memecoin was and is. Stephen Gillers, a professor of law and legal ethics at New York University, offered the formal version: "Trump, back when he was a real estate developer, boasted that he plays 'to people's fantasies.' Here, he seems to have encouraged supporters to invest with the expectation they could anticipate riches — even as he himself was cashing out." The Art of the Deal quote in the epigraph above is not archival. It is operational.
The regulatory environment that made this possible was not accidental either. Since Trump took office, the Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped or paused nearly 60% of its crypto enforcement cases, including long-running actions against Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken. Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law in July 2025, creating the first federal framework for stablecoins — a framework that contained no provisions addressing memecoins or tokens issued by elected officials. Europe's MiCA regulation took the opposite approach, requiring any crypto asset sold to the public to meet disclosure and consumer protection standards regardless of what it calls itself. The United States, under the president who launched the $TRUMP coin, chose not to extend those protections to the people buying it. The cop left the beat before the robbery.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has called for a prohibition on the creation and promotion of cryptocurrency memecoins by government officials and their spouses. Trump responded by stating there is nothing wrong with making money off digital assets. His White House rejected any suggestion that he had cashed in at the expense of his followers. The financial disclosure showing $1.4 billion in crypto income was filed the same week the Nansen report documented $3.81 billion in retail losses. Both documents are public. The arithmetic is not complicated.
Then there is the First Lady's coin. The $MELANIA token launched on Inauguration Day itself — January 20, 2025 — and is now down 99.4% from its peak. A $100,000 investment at the high is worth roughly $361 today. Combined, the $TRUMP and $MELANIA tokens have wiped out $4.3 billion in retail wealth, while 45 early-deployment wallets captured $1.2 billion. For every dollar insiders made, retail investors lost twenty. A lawsuit alleges the $MELANIA token was part of a deliberate pump-and-dump scheme whose operators used the First Lady as "window dressing for a crime." She is not named as a conspirator. Her name, the complaint states, was simply step one of a six-step playbook — one the same operators had already run on other political figures, including Argentine President Javier Milei.
The losses radiate outward from the centre in every direction except toward the man at the centre.
The people who lost money in the $TRUMP memecoin are not a demographic abstraction. They are his voters. The coin launched three days before his inauguration, at the peak of political trust, on the platform he uses to communicate with his base. The purchase of a $TRUMP coin was not separable from the politics of supporting Trump — it was an extension of it, packaged as community and celebration and winning. "Join my very special Trump community." They joined. They sent their money. He cashed out $636 million in royalties while the token they bought fell 97% from its peak.
The Art of the Deal was published in 1987. In it, Trump described his approach to business: "I play to people's fantasies. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole." Truthful hyperbole. The fantasy was WINNING. The truth was $3.81 billion in losses distributed across nearly one million wallets, concentrated among the people who believed him most.
They showed up. He cashed out. That is the deal.
__________
Sources
Lipton, Eric, and David Yaffe-Bellany. "Nearly a Million Investors Lost a Total of $3.8 Billion on Trump Crypto Coin." New York Times, July 4, 2026.
Nansen. "$TRUMP Memecoin Analysis." Blockchain analytics report, July 2026.
The Next Web. "Trump Memecoin Cost Investors $3.8B as President Earned $636M." July 4, 2026.
CoinDesk. "Trump's Crypto Token Buyers Are Down $3.8 Billion, Nansen Data Shows." July 4, 2026.
GV Wire. "Investors Face Major Losses in Meme Coin Market." July 4, 2026.
Office of Government Ethics. Trump Annual Financial Disclosure, 2025. Released June 30, 2026.
ABC News. "Trump Earned Over $1.4 Billion from Crypto Ventures in 2025, Financial Disclosure Shows." July 2, 2026.
BeInCrypto / CryptoRank. "TRUMP and MELANIA Meme Coins Leave Retail Investors With $4.3 Billion Loss." February 22, 2026.
Forbes Australia. "$MELANIA Under Fire: First Lady's Memecoin Was Part of Fraudulent Scheme, Lawsuit Alleges." October 23, 2025.
Common Dreams. "Creators of Melania Trump Meme Coin Accused of Fraud as Value Has Tanked By 95%." October 23, 2025.
Trump, Donald. The Art of the Deal. Random House, 1987.
