The memecoin associated with US president Donald Trump has lost three-quarters of its value in the two weeks it’s been trading, with the data increasingly aligning it with other pump-and-dump cryptocurrency schemes.
The coin, known via its ticker $TRUMP (TRUMP2024-USD), launched on January 17, with its price hitting the $75.35 mark and reaching an overall $14.5bn in market value two days later.
Today, it’s trading at a $3.6bn market cap, with the market price around the $17.90 mark, according to data provider CoinMarketCap.
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The coins sparked scepticism about the ethics associated with a sitting president being closely affiliated with a cryptocurrency that bears his own name. Memecoins with similar characteristics have been associated with so-called “pump-and-dump” schemes.
Fight Fight Fight and CIC Digital have said $TRUMP and $MELANIA (MELANIA35347-USD) are not investments or securities but are an “expression of support.”
Reuters reported earlier this week that entities behind $TRUMP have accumulated close to $100m in trading fees since launch, based on estimates from blockchain analysis firms including Merkle Science and Chainalysis.
At least 50 of the largest investors in the coin have made profits in excess of $10m each, the report added, citing Chainalysis.
The drop in price comes alongside volatility among more established cryptocurrencies. Over the last five days, bitcoin (BTC-USD) is 4.4% lower against the US dollar, having been put under pressure by tariff-related selling elsewhere in the market.
The largest crypto asset regained some ground on Tuesday as it returned to the symbolic $100,000 mark.
Ethereum (ETH-USD) is also 7.5% higher today, trading at the $2,825 mark. The price is still down 22.9% over the past month.
