Photo: Intelligencer; Photo: Getty Images
Over the past four months, President Trump’s entry into the world of cryptocurrency has been extremely fruitful and extremely unregulated, thanks to the fact that his administration has stripped pretty much all regulations from this world. But one of the president’s many crypto ventures — and probably the dumbest one yet — was facing a potential disaster scenario in the last few days.
The Trump meme coin is a token with no discernible value other than betting on the fate of the presidency. The president and his team of advisers have already gotten richer off the $TRUMP coin, making a reported $100 million in fees alone even as the people who bought into the project lost over $2 billion in value since the coin’s high earlier this year. The fun looked like it could end on Friday thanks to the coin’s own makers.
On April 18, three months after the $TRUMP coin’s initial launch stupefied even some of crypto’s most ardent backers for its blind greed, the coin faced a major hurdle. Some 40 million tokens were entering circulation, a number that represented about 20 percent of the circulating supply. If the new supply, worth about $300 million at the current price, were sold off, it would crater the price of the coin. With another $4 million hitting the market every day after that until another major supply unlock later this summer, it looked like a potential doomsday scenario for the venture, with the value already fallen over 90 percent from its high back in January. The mainstream and crypto media promised calamity:
“Trump Memecoin ‘Unlock’ Raises Risk of Further Slide of Once-Hot Token”
“HUGE Token Unlock Will Rock TRUMP’s Price to the Core”
“Why the Trump Meme Coin Is Bad News for Buyers”
And yet, the once-hot meme coin’s price was not rocked to the core. In fact, over the weekend, the coin saw a modest gain in value. The sellers remained in control for one obvious reason. Two Trump-owned businesses — CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight Fight LLC — represented 80 percent of the incoming supply glut. If they were to sell off, they’d only be killing their own chance at achieving an absurd amount of money for doing almost nothing.
While this could just be a short-term confidence pump before dumping off their share, it looks like the $TRUMP coin will continue on at its diminished $8-ish price for the time being. (It’s certainly not nothing: With a market cap of $1.67 billion, it is the fourth-largest meme coin behind “Pepe” and ahead of “Bonk.”) Meanwhile, the Trump crypto team reportedly appears to be onto something new: a real-estate video game that somehow combines Trump’s new love of cryptocurrency with his old fondness for the Monopoly board game.
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