The curious trade arrived just after 9 p.m. on January 17-one bet of $ 1,096,109 Less than two minutes after the soon President of the United States posted on his social media account that his family had spent a cryptocurrency called $ Trump.
In those first minutes, a crypto wallet with a unique identification code that started with 6QSC2CX a huge load of these new tokens – 5,971,750 of them – for the opening sales price of only 18 cents each, an increase in the $ Trump price Soon reach $ 75 per token.
This early trader, whose identity is unknown, ran away with a two -day profit of no less than $ 109 million, according to an analysis performed for the New York Times.
But the rapid profit for early traders, whose names are unknown, but some of whom seem to be located in China, at the expense of a much larger number of slower investors who cumulatively have suffered more than $ 2 billion in losses after the price of the Price of the prize Token crashed.
From the middle of this week, more than 810,000 portfolios had lost money in the bet, according to a study that the crypto forensics firm chain analysis for the New York Times was performed. The total losses are almost certainly much greater: the data do not include transactions that took place in a series of popular crypto market sites that only started to offer the coin after the price had already risen.
The price of $ Trump fluctuated around $ 17 this week, less than a quarter of the peak value of $ 75.
Whether people earned or lost money, it was fantastic company for the Trumps. Almost $ 100 million in trading costs have been streamed to the family and its partners have flooded, although most of them have not yet been cashed in, according to the data from the chains salysis.
President Trump left these scrambling three days before he was inaugurated, which activated a fast tree-and-bust series that has now raised broader questions about the speculative dangers of so-called memecoins, a kind of cryptocurrency based on an online joke or famous mascot.
He promoted the currency on his own social media platform, as well as the X of Elon Musk and said: “Become a member of my very special Trump community. Get your $ trump now. “
The series of events is hardly surprising, said various former state and federal financial supervisors.
It is in fact part of the design of the entire Memecoin industry, which is legally but largely unregulated. The trade is based on major early purchases by advanced traders who pump up the price, only to sell their interests as less experienced retail investors follow and buy their lead, and often lose.
What makes this situation particularly disturbing, for the government and former regulators' watchdogs, is that the Trump family benefits from this exploitation pattern and at the same time Mr Trump is quickly moving to bring an abrupt end to a regulatory performance against crypto by different government Agencies.
“The president participates in shaded crypto schemes that harm investors and at the same time appoint financial supervisors who will reverse the protection for victims and that he and his family can isolate him,” said Corey Frayer, who recently left a post as a message Crypto advisor of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The losses on the $ Trump bet were very real for hundreds of thousands of investors, including some who are vocal supporters of Mr. Trump.
In the days before Mr Trump was sworn in, Shawn M. Whitson, 40, Van Walnut Cove, NC, owner of a small computer repair company, celebrated the return of Mr Trump to the White House. “Today we take our country back!” Mr. Whitson wrote, with a photo of Mr. Trump, on the inauguration day. He also expressed the hope that $ Trump would rise in price.
But towards the end of January, Mr. Whitson was fed up. “Ready with this $ Trump nonsense,” he wrote in a placement on social media. Mr. Whitson, achieved by The Times on Friday, disappointed. “That coin is a joke.”
In the past six months, President Trump and his sons have made a series of aggressive trips in the crypto industry. While Mr. Trump promoted Crypto on the campaign track, he also helped with starting a company called World Liberty Financial, which offered a digital currency called $ WLFI to certain rich investors with experience in the financial markets.
Last week, Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of the social media platform of Mr Trump, Truth Social, announced that it moved to financial services by creating a brand known as Truthfi will offer that investment products linked to Bitcoin .
The Chief Executive of Trump Media, Devin Nunes, called the offer “a competitive alternative to the wake -up funds and debt problems that you will find on the market.”
But the debut of the $ Trump Memecoin was the first time that the Trump family had brought a new crypto -toky to normal investors on the market.
At the request of the time, Crypto experts reconstructed some of the early transactions of buyers from Mr Trump token, they investigated their profit and how, as soon as the first buyers started to dump their participations, the price of $ Trump then crashed, pain Other investors.
The analysis of crypto transaction records was carried out by the forensic companies Nansen and chain analysis and by Molly White, an independent crypto researcher who is often critical of industry. The data was then assessed by the Times.
This pattern of large, fast buyers who come in and then sell from their Memecoin Holdings is part of the reason that state rulers in New York have recently warned the consumer for these offers, and said their own coins quickly at a blown price, so that substantial Winning is harvested and the price crashed. “
Regulators in New York mentioned these maneuvers 'pump and dump schemes' and said they can leave buyers who come in with large losses.
No evidence has emerged that Mr. Trump or his employees have artificially blown up the price of the coin or deal with trade with prior knowledge. When asked about the early $ Trump transactions and taking a win, refused to comment the middle son of the president, Eric Trump.
The starting gun
In the crypto world, every transaction is recorded on an audience visible ledger that is known as a blockchain. Usually the names of the people who make transactions remain hidden, whereby each account is only identified by a long chain of letters and numbers.
With the blockchain, crypto analysts can go back and look at new offers and decipher what each wallet did – when he first invested, when he transferred or sold them, and what turned out to be the ultimate profit and the loss for each game. This analysis can also indicate deviations in transactions that raise questions.
Blockchain records, for example, it appears that the $ Trump token was 'beaten' on January 17 at 9:01 am, creating a so-called contract address. It was not announced for 12 o'clock by Mr. Trump.
But the account behind the first major public purchase – the $ 1,096,109 bet – was founded about three hours before Mr. Trump launched the Munt, an analysis of public crypto transaction records found. It was filled that evening with virtual currencies, apparently ready to discuss a new offer.
The well -timed transactions, and the fact that the wallet received his financing shortly before Mr. Trump was launched, immediately drew skepticism from crypto analysts, who speculated that a trader had acted on information.
In the crypto world it is sometimes impossible to put the person behind an exchange. It is common for people to post large and sometimes non -repairable claims on social media before they disappear abruptly, making it difficult for amateur investors to distinguish legitimate investments of scams.
This month, an X account that claimed to represent a Crypto trader named Syed Sameer that he was the owner of one of the portfolios that had orchestrated the first gigantic $ Trump trade worth $ 1.1 million.
Mr. Sameer, who also claimed to be an investor in World Liberty Financial, was subsequently accused of X of the use of Insider information to get to the $ Trump token early.
But the research through time found inconsistencies in the claims on the website of Mr. Sameer and X account. After he was confronted with those issues, Mr. Sameer said in reports about the Chat app Telegram that he had not actually managed the wallet.
Mr. Sameer had lied to it “for influence, to be honest with you,” he said. “I know it's stupid and childish, but yes, I was messing around.”
The Lucky 31
What is clear, based on blockchain records, is that the person behind that trade of $ 1.1 million is a major player among the hordes of professional traders who quickly buy up and sell new memecoins, try to cash in on speculative peaks, because the coins have been published.
After making the purchase, the owner of the account then quickly moved to sell the coins, which resulted in a profit of at least $ 50 million, according to the analysis of the transaction by Aurelie Barthere van Nansen. Further sales brought the total profit to $ 109 million, according to Mrs White's assessment.
Other large $ Trump transactions have also attracted attention, including one of a trader who started buying the coin about two minutes after it was launched. The trader then sold those $ Trump tokens in less than half an hour, with a net profit of $ 2.7 million, the blockchain shows.
Slightly less than 700,000 portfolios registered profits at $ Trump, the study by chain analysis appears. The early transactions were some of the most profitable: 31 of these major early traders, according to the Nansen analysis, earned $ 669 million in profit within a few days.
But there were more losers for every winner.
During the first 19 days of trade, a total of 813,294 portfolios registered losses, either by cashing in with losses or sticking to coins that had fallen in value.
The losers – those who have paid more for topping than it is worth now – have lost $ 2 billion cumulatively in actual or paper losses. Yet many of these traders retain their loss of money, perhaps hopeful that the price will rise again, the data shows.
The winnings that were largely protected by the early buyers were huge: a total of $ 6.6 billion in cashed in, according to chain analysis.
This is a well -known pattern for crypto traders. A few weeks before the launch of $ Trump, some of the same portfolios bought the token from the president, also exchanged a memecoin called Hawk Tuah, promoted by the social media influencer Haliey Welch.
The Hawk Tuah -Munt rose in December after it was first introduced in a market capitalization of $ 490 million, and subsequently set to $ 10 million from this week, causing thousands of investors to lose and a lawsuit generated that it “a speculative had created razing “and violated the federal law. (Mrs Welch said on X that she “fully cooperated and am dedicated to helping the legal team that represents the affected persons.”)
“This is comparable to sports betting or gambling,” said Gareth Rhodes, a former deputy chief inspector at the New York State Department of Financial Services, which helps regulate the crypto industry and other financial service providers. “The retail customer who uses their money is the risk of losing most, if not everything in the hope of a payment.”
Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
