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$TRUMP meme coin generates $616M for Trump family as buyers lose over $700M
A Reuters investigation reveals the stark math behind the president's crypto token: insiders cashed in while retail investors watched their holdings crater 97%.
The Trump family pulled in roughly $616 million from sales of the $TRUMP meme coin. The people who bought it lost more than $700 million.
That’s the headline finding from a Reuters investigation into the token, which launched on January 17, 2025. Investors poured at least $1.2 billion into $TRUMP. By late April 2026, the total value of their holdings had shrunk to approximately $521 million.
How the money moved
Here’s how the setup worked. One billion $TRUMP tokens were created in total. Only about 200 million of those were released to the public market. The remaining 800 million, a full 80% of the supply, were retained by two companies linked to the Trump family: CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight Fight LLC.
The token hit a peak price of $75.35. It has since collapsed to around $2.38, a decline of nearly 97%.
The $TRUMP token is built on the Solana blockchain and functions as a meme coin with no underlying utility. It doesn’t govern a protocol, doesn’t grant access to a service, and doesn’t represent a claim on any asset.
The bigger picture: $2.3 billion and counting
The $TRUMP token wasn’t an isolated play. According to Reuters, Trump family-linked firms have accumulated at least $2.3 billion in profits from various crypto ventures since the 2024 election cycle. The meme coin was just one piece of a broader portfolio of crypto-adjacent activities that leveraged Trump’s political brand for financial gain.
That $2.3 billion figure sits against what Reuters describes as comparable losses suffered by investors across these ventures.
The token launched three days before Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025.
What this means for investors
Investors collectively spent $1.2 billion. They now hold roughly $521 million in value. The Trump-affiliated entities collected $616 million.
When 80% of a token’s supply never reaches the open market, the price discovery process is fundamentally skewed. Public buyers are trading a fraction of the total supply, which means any selling pressure from the retained tokens can overwhelm demand.