Update (Jan. 19, 11:10 pm UTC): This article has been updated to add information throughout.
US President-elect Donald Trump’s controversial memecoin fell 38% as his wife, incoming First Lady Melania Trump, launched a memecoin of her own, which has hit a value of $6 billion within under two hours.
Mrs Trump promoted her self-titled memecoin MELANIA in a Jan. 19 X post that was also shared by her husband.
DEXScreener data shows that over 45,000 wallets have bought the token, which had hit a market cap of $6.14 billion since launching at just after 9 pm UTC on Jan. 19.
The Official Melania Meme is live!
— MELANIA TRUMP (@MELANIATRUMP) January 19, 2025
You can buy $MELANIA now. https://t.co/mgSwtOQYnq
FUAfBo2jgks6gB4Z4LfZkqSZgzNucisEHqnNebaRxM1P pic.twitter.com/o2V9BQx2zG
Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s self-titled TRUMP token saw $5 billion wiped off its market cap, with its price falling 38% from $74.6 to $45.9 in 40 minutes, CoinMarketCap data shows.
A website for the MELANIA token shared by Mrs. Trump said the memecoin was made to express “support” and “engagement” and is “not intended” to be an investment opportunity.
The site claimed that 35% of the tokens have been distributed to the token’s team, while 20% has been allocated to both treasury and community. It added that 15% was offered to the public, and 10% was set aside for liquidity.
However, blockchain analytics platform Bubblemaps said in a Jan. 19 X post that nearly 90% of the token supply is in a single wallet and doesn’t match the claimed token distribution.
JUST IN: 🇺🇸 The bubble map of $MELANIA does NOT match the distribution on their website pic.twitter.com/Q734sd4ykJ
— Bubblemaps (@bubblemaps) January 19, 2025
Coinbase executive Conor Grogan said on X that it’s “unlikely” MELANIA is a rug pull but it’s possible that it was launched by a less organized team compared to the one behind the TRUMP token.
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“My guess is that this token was handled by a different team than TRUMP’s,” he said. “That one looks like professional market makers, this one honestly looks like college kids.”
Grogan noted that MELANIA’s creator wallet was funded by a wallet that traded on Solana memecoin launchpad pump.fun.
An anonymous crypto developer known as “cygaar” added that Mrs. Trump’s website was only created on Jan. 18, isn’t protected by cybersecurity service Cloudfare and “has some half-assed front end code.”
Intellectual property rights to the website “melaniameme.com,” which supported the launch of MELANIA, are held by MKT World LLC — a company set up by Mrs. Trump in 2021 that shares a business address with the Trump International Golf Club, according to Florida Department of State records.
The memecoin launches come one day ahead of Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 presidential inauguration.
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