Say it ain’t so…
Somebody made a killing on Trump’s memecoin scam, somebody who obviously knew it was coming. Gosh I wonder who it might be?
The curious trade came a little past 9 p.m. on Jan. 17 — a $1,096,109 bet less than two minutes after the soon-to-be president of the United States posted on his social media account that his family had issued a cryptocurrency called $Trump.
In those first minutes, a crypto wallet with a unique identification code beginning 6QSc2Cx secured a giant load of these new tokens — 5,971,750 of them — at the opening sale price of just 18 cents each, starting a surge in the $Trump price that would soon reach $75 per token.
This early trader, whose identity is not known, walked away with a two-day profit of as much as $109 million, according to an analysis performed for The New York Times.
But the fast profits for early traders, whose names are unknown but some of whom appear to be based in China, came at the expense of a far larger number of slower investors who have cumulatively suffered more than $2 billion in losses after the price of the token crashed.
As of the middle of this week, more than 810,000 wallets had lost money on the bet, according to an examination that the crypto forensics firm Chainalysis performed for The New York Times. The total losses are almost certainly much larger: The data does not include transactions that took place on a series of popular crypto marketplaces that started offering the coin only after its price had already surged.
The price of $Trump hovered around $17 this week, less than a quarter of its $75 peak value.
Whether people made or lost money, it was stellar business for the Trumps. Nearly $100 million in trading fees have flowed to the family and its partners, although most of that has not yet been cashed out, the Chainalysis data shows.
Imagine that. And it’s all perfectly fine, apparently. It’s basically a vanilla Pump and Dump scheme dressed up in techno spin.
I think we’re supposed to feel pity for the victims:
In the days before Mr. Trump was sworn in, Shawn M. Whitson, 40, of Walnut Cove, N.C., owner of a small computer repair business, had celebrated Mr. Trump’s return to the White House. “Today, we take our country back!” Mr. Whitson wrote, with a photo of Mr. Trump, on Inauguration Day. He also expressed hope that $Trump would rise in price.But by the end of January, Mr. Whitson was fed up. “Done with this $Trump crap,” he wrote in a social media posting. Mr. Whitson, reached by The Times on Friday expressed disappointment. “That coin is a joke.”
I can’t say I feel sorry for him. Trump’s schemes are legendary. He should have known better.
How many Trumpers will lose their shirts on this one and come back for more?
Last week, Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Mr. Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, announced that it was moving into the financial services industry by creating a brand known as TruthFi that will offer investment products tied to Bitcoin.
Trump Media’s chief executive, Devin Nunes, called the offerings “a competitive alternative to the woke funds and debanking problems that you find throughout the market.”