Donald Trump’s surprise memecoin soars to $24bn on day one

With inauguration day just around the corner, Donald Trump is making time for what truly matters — launching a memecoin.

Announced via Trump’s Twitter and Truth Social accounts, the $TRUMP coin features the slogan “Fight, fight, fight!,” and claims to represent “everything we stand for: WINNING!”

There was scepticism immediately following the posts, with many assuming that Trump’s accounts were hacked and being used to peddle a fraudulent token that would soon get rugpulled.

However, the posts have been live for over eight hours and there has been no statement from Trump or his team indicating anything to the contrary.

The token is Solana-based and has already climbed to a market value of $24 billion. Solana’s native cryptocurrency is also up 10% on the day while the broader crypto market is seeing red.

‘Wild distribution’

The tokenomics of the project have some already ringing alarm bells.

Blockchain investigator CoffeeZilla highlighted concerns about the coin’s distribution.

“80% owned by one wallet. Public distribution is 10%, Liquidity 10%. That is a wild distribution for a meme coin,” he tweeted.

The official website reveals a total supply of 200 million $TRUMP available on launch, growing to one billion tokens over three years.

Only 20% of the supply is currently accessible to the public and liquidity pools, while the remaining 80% is allocated across six “Creator and CIC Digital Groups” that begin unlocking after 3-12 months and vest over 24 months.

Profit ‘black box’

The $TRUMP memecoin ties back to CIC Digital LLC, a Trump-owned entity that has previously overseen the sale of Trump-branded NFTs, sneakers, and other merchandise.

CIC Digital generated over $7 million in licensing revenue last year, leveraging Trump’s name across various products.

Experts warn that CIC Digital’s model of licensing Trump’s name to external companies — without clear oversight — creates a “black box” where profits and partnerships remain largely hidden.

Kyle Baird is DL News’ Weekend Editor. Got a tip? Email at kbaird@dlnews.com.