Besides making millions, the biggest winners trading the world’s first-ever presidential memecoin all have one thing in common: an impeccable sense of timing.
Within a day of its launch, the $TRUMP memecoin ballooned to over $14.5 billion.
Less than a week later, it had halved. But not before a handful of quick-draw crypto traders nabbed more than $133 million along the way.
Take the pseudonymous trader Naseem, whose avatar on X is a white cat dancing atop an illuminated purple pentagram.
Naseem raked in a whopping $53 million trading President Donald Trump’s vanity coin in January, according to Nansen.
Pocketing millions
The analytics firm tied two other crypto wallets to Naseem, which boast over $52 million in additional winnings in total.
Then there’s Hexiecs, whose profile is a picture of a Milady — a non-fungible token collection of anime-style characters — sporting a cap with an American flag. Hexiecs raked in $22 million on the presidential memecoin.
And Dingaling, the founder of a memecoin project called Boop.fun, who pocketed another $8 million.
A user with a hooded figure of a dog named Spider Crypto and a blue-haired anime character called CryptoD bagged even more millions trading the volatile token, according to Nansen.
Welcome to the memecoin madhouse, where traders represented by diabolical cats and zany cartoons are making instant fortunes.
Memecoin insiders
As of May 5, the Trump coin had minted 58 different crypto decamillionaires, according to Chainalysis.
Insiders on the Trump memecoin team are also sharing the windfall.
The coin’s creators — an entity owned by the Trump trust called CIC Digital LLC and another called Fight Fight LLC — raked in more than $320 million in trading fees, a Chainalysis representative told DL News on May 5.
Neither memecoin venture responded immediately to DL News’ requests for comment.
Even as these traders cash in, the crypto industry’s agenda in Washington is getting blowback.
The Trump family’s growing crypto empire — two memecoins, a DeFi protocol, a stablecoin, and potential digital asset ETFs — has roiled the political calculus in Washington.
Last Thursday, a landmark stablecoin bill went from a sure thing to rejection after Senate Democrats seized on what they call corruption and Trump’s “conflicts of interest,” and voted against advancing the legislation.
Melania’s memecoin
It’s not just the president. Many of the same $TRUMP traders bagged millions speculating on the First Lady’s memecoin, too.
Within a day of its launch, speculators catapulted the value of Melania Trump’s token to nearly $2 billion.
A laser-eyed penguin named Flipping Profits on X made $3 million trading the president‘s token and another $8 million trading Melania’s coin, according to Nansen.
Flipping Profits bagged another $4.5 million riding the surge in Libra, the memecoin endorsed by Argentine President Javier Milei in February. That token quickly collapsed, left thousands in the lurch, and embarrassed Millei.
Brc20niubi, whose X bio reads in Chinese as the “greatest blockchain genius in the entire universe,” earned $6 million trading $TRUMP and nearly $2 million trading $MELANIA.
The First Lady’s token has since collapsed to roughly $163 million, according to CoinGecko.
Naseem and Flipping Profits could not be reached for comment. Hexiecs, Dingaling, and Brc20niubi did not respond to requests for comment.
Losing proposition
A Nansen spokesperson told DL News that the company uses a mix of onchain and offchain data points to identify wallets and the people behind them.
Except for these select few, the Trump memecoin has been a losing proposition.
Of the roughly 2 million crypto wallets that bought Trump, 764,000 lost money trading the Trump token as of Monday, Chainalysis said.
That’s not stopped the Trump memecoin team from priming the pump yet again.
In April, with the token foundering, a Trump website announced the memecoin’s top 220 holders would be invited to a “gala dinner” with the president at one of his golf clubs near Washington.
The token soared more than 50% after the announcement as roughly 54,000 crypto wallets scooped up the token, Chainalysis told DL News.
And the move earned the Trump team another $1.3 million.
Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at liam@dlnews.com.
