The meme coin TRUMP, associated with President-elect Donald Trump, experienced a significant drop of over 40% in value after Melania Trump launched her own meme coin, MELANIA. Initially trading at around $72, TRUMP fell below $39, resulting in a loss of $6 billion in market value, which had peaked at about $14.5 billion earlier in the day.
This decline pushed TRUMP out of the top two meme coins by market capitalization, allowing Shiba Inu (SHIB) to reclaim the second position. Despite the drop, TRUMP’s value rebounded to around $46, marking a 68% increase within 24 hours.
Melania Trump announced the MELANIA token on platforms like Truth Social and X, gaining credibility when Trump retweeted the news. The new token, based on Solana, quickly reached a valuation of $12 billion within three hours of its launch, according to Dexscreener.
The MELANIA project plans to allocate its funds as follows: 35% to the team, 20% each to treasury and community, 15% to the public, and 10% to liquidity. However, reports from Bubblemaps indicated that 89% of the token supply was initially controlled by a single wallet, raising concerns about transparency.
Experts noted that TRUMP and MELANIA are separate projects with different teams and no collaboration. Conor Grogan from Coinbase pointed out that the wallet responsible for MELANIA’s creation was not a multisignature wallet, suggesting a lack of professionalism compared to the team behind TRUMP.
Blockchain engineer Cygaar criticized MELANIA’s website for poor construction and security, contrasting it with the well-executed Official Trump site. The launch of MELANIA has faced backlash from the crypto community, with some expressing a desire for stricter regulation from the SEC.
