Key Insights:
Donald Trump's memecoin launch saw instant success and a 50% crash from ATH in a single day.
$MELANIA memecoin, on the other hand, saw its value sink lower than the launch price.
The major reason for the collapse seems to be the skewed tokenomics of both coins.
Both $TRUMP and $MELANIA had an 80% uncirculated supply.
An advisor to the team was also accused of rug-pulling his TikTok coin.
Just after a day of launch, Donald Trump's $TRUMP and $MELANIA Trump's $MELANIA memecoins saw a bitter crash. The $TRUMP memecoin still has a price of $37 (500% gain since launch), which is 50% lower than its ATH price of $13.73. However, $MELANIA crashed to 43% of its launch price ($7.7) and traded at $4.3 at press time.
A day prior to Donald Trump's official inauguration, CIC Digital and Fight Fight Fight LLC launched the first couple's memecoins one after one.
However, they forgot to mention that they held as large a token share as 80%. And this was not taken kindly by the crypto community. What irked the community more than the person who was an advisor to the team that launched these coins was himself accused of rug-pulling his project.
Further, Melania Trump shared the tokenomics of her memecoin on her website, and users found it to hold much more tokens than what was on that page.
Eventually, within the first day, both $TRUMP and $MELANIA saw their tokens plummet to 50% or lower than their ATH value.
Donald Trump's memecoin $TRUMP was a shocker for the entire crypto community, and CIC Digital launched it just one day before Trump became the US President. The team launched the coin on the Solana blockchain via Pump.Fun, the Solana memecoin creation tool.
The token became an instant success due to Trump's inauguration being already over the news and an official Tweet from him was all required to capture media attention. By the mid-day, $TRUMP was the 12th largest crypto with a market cap of $15 billion and a price tag of $75 at its peak.
$TRUMP Memecoin Price At Press Time
CoinMarketCap
Capturing on that trend and capitalizing on Trump's massive success, Melania Trump, the first lady of the US, launched her own memecoin using the same creators via Pump.Fun. Her token, too, rose to a $2 billion market cap and $13.65 ATH within the same day.
At press time, $MELANIA was at $4.4, 43% down from it's launch price of $7.7 and 67% down from its ATH of $13.65.
$MELANIA Memecoin Price At Press Time
CoinMarketCap
The person being held responsible for the launch, Ryan Fournier, has a chequered past. Previously, he launched a memecoin called TikTok Coin, and sold everything within hours of launching it.
He was accused of rug-pulling his official TikTok Coin and even accepted to selling it. His claims were that the coin was falling and hence he sold it in a panic. Here is a complete series of his tweets and replies from Reddit.
Unlike most memecoins, which are either unlocked in phases or are completely distributed on launch, the creators of both $TRUMP and $MELANIA had kept 80% of the entire token supply to themselves.
However, tokenomics from $MELANIA's website show something else.
$MELANIA Memecoin Tokenomics
Further, besides the tokenomics, the token unlock schedule is also slightly disturbing. The team tokens are to be unlocked after exactly a month post-launch. This action could flood the markets with 30 million additional $MELANIA coins, eventually sinking the token price further. Hence, it saw a larger crash than $TRUMP.
Despite all their mistakes, the group also had a few successes, like the timing of the launch when the world's attention was on Donald Trump. The timing alone made the project successful, valuing it at $15 billion in a single day.
Further, the value of memecoins is often set by the attention the original topics have on the meme. In the future, whenever Donald Trump sees greater media attention, both coins will likely accelerate.
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