President-elect Donald Trump has taken another step into the crypto world with the launch of a Solana-based coin called Official Trump (TRUMP).
Although the launch generated significant commercial activity, it also raised questions about legitimacy, allocation and potential security risks.
Trump’s “official” coin
On January 18, Trump announced the launch of a TRUMP coin on his official X and Truth Social accounts.
“My NEW official Trump meme is HERE!” It’s time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING! Join my very special Trump community,” the president-elect said. wrote on X.
The meme piece, as detailed on its website, is inspired by its survival of a alleged assassination attempt on July 13, 2024, during his campaign. The token’s meta image depicts Trump with a raised fist and the slogan “Fight, fight, fight,” echoing his actions that day.
“This Trump Meme celebrates a leader who doesn’t back down, no matter the odds,” the website says.
The project website presents the tokenomics as a total supply of 1 billion tokens that would be unlocked over three years. Currently, 200 million tokens are available for trading, of which only 20% are allocated for public circulation and liquidity.
The remaining 80% is split between six groups, including CIC Digital Groups, a company owned by Trump’s trust and which previously managed his NFT projects.
Crypto Experts Point Out Red Flags in Trump Coin
The launch of the token sparked a wave of interest and concern within the crypto community.
Conor Grogan of Coinbase reported concentration of token ownership as an important red flag. He noted that 80% of the token supply – worth $3 billion – is locked in a multi-signature wallet controlled by the creator.
Additionally, the top five wallets hold more than 90% of the circulating supply, raising concerns about possible price manipulation.
Blockchain analysis firm SpotOnChain further highlighted unusual patterns. The project received initial funding in GROUND of Gate.io and Binance but avoided the US exchanges like Coinbase. This discrepancy has fueled skepticism about the authenticity of the token and the intentions behind it.
“On-chain data reveals that the owner of the token is 5e2qRc, funded by DKbF4. Interestingly, this address received SOL from Gate.io 2 days ago and from Binance 10 days ago,” SpotOnChain reported.
There are also fears of potential hacking as social media security breaches have become more common. However, Polymarket the data suggests only a 10% chance that Trump’s accounts were compromised.
Adding to the confusion, Trump’s Truth Social account shared unrelated updates, such as the nomination of Peggy Schwinn as Deputy Secretary of Education, shortly after the memecoin announcement.
Additionally, blockchain engineer Cygaar pointed out that the technical infrastructure of the meme coin website is very similar to Trump’s first NFT projectssuggesting shared development teams.
“The new Trump memecoin website is rolled out almost the same as his previous NFT website. Same Cloudflare configuration, same deployment with Heroku, same SSL certificate issuer. Very similar HTML structure to before”, Cygaar declared.
Despite all this skepticism, TRUMP has seen massive activity in the market. According to Dexscreenerthe token has surged nearly 3,000% since its debut, trading at $13.23 at the time of reporting.
This spike pushed its FDV to $13 billion, with trading volumes exceeding hundreds of millions. Major exchanges, including Bybit and Jupiter, have already announced upcoming TRUMP listings.
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