Nearly a million people who bought President Donald Trump’s $TRUMP memecoin have collectively lost $3.81 billion, according to an analysis by blockchain analytics firm Nansen. The data, which covers all transactions through the end of June, found that 988,905 of the token’s buyers are underwater.

Trump earned $636 million from the same coin. His 927-page financial disclosure, released by the Office of Government Ethics on 30 June, lists the payout as royalties from CIC Digital LLC, a Trump Organisation affiliate, under a licensing agreement with an entity called Celebration Coins, for which no public digital footprint has been found.

How the money flows

Trump launched the $TRUMP token on the Solana blockchain on 17 January 2025, three days before his second inauguration. The coin surged to $75.26 within hours, briefly giving it a fully diluted market capitalisation above $75 billion.

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First Lady Melania Trump launched her own token, $MELANIA, on 19 January, adding a second Trump-branded coin to the market on the eve of the inauguration. Both coins have since collapsed.

$TRUMP now trades at roughly $1.78, a decline of more than 97% from its peak. A $10,000 investment made on inauguration day would be worth approximately $364 today.

The structure ensures the president profits regardless of what happens to the price. Trump earns royalties and transaction fees each time the token is bought or sold.

Of the one billion tokens created, 80% are held by two Trump-affiliated entities, CIC Digital and Fight Fight Fight LLC. They are being released on a three-year unlock schedule, with roughly 900,000 tokens entering circulation daily.

The regulatory vacuum

The $TRUMP coin launched into a regulatory environment the president was simultaneously reshaping. The SEC has dropped or paused nearly 60% of its crypto enforcement cases since Trump took office, including long-running actions against Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken.

Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law in July 2025, creating the first federal framework for stablecoins. The law gave institutional players the regulatory clarity to launch tokenised products, but it contained no provisions addressing memecoins or tokens issued by elected officials.

Europe’s MiCA regulation took the opposite approach, requiring any crypto asset sold to the public to meet disclosure and consumer protection standards regardless of what it calls itself. The American framework has no equivalent safeguard for the retail buyers who make up the vast majority of memecoin purchasers.

The dinner

On 22 May 2025, Trump hosted a black-tie gala at his Virginia golf club for the top 220 holders of the $TRUMP token, who had spent a combined $148 million. The guest list included Chinese-born crypto mogul Justin Sun, the coin’s largest holder, who at the time was facing SEC fraud charges that the agency has since paused.

A Bloomberg analysis found that 19 of the top 25 wallets were almost certainly controlled by individuals outside the United States. The event offered direct personal access to the sitting president in exchange for purchasing a financial product from which he profits.

The broader crypto empire

The memecoin is one piece of a larger operation. Trump’s financial disclosure lists total crypto-related income of at least $1.4 billion for 2025, including approximately $800 million from World Liberty Financial token sales and $197 million from an equity sale tied to a stablecoin holding company.

World Liberty Financial, a decentralised finance protocol in which a Trump business entity holds 60% and receives 75% of all coin sale revenue, has generated its own controversies. The venture pledged 5 billion of its own tokens to borrow $75 million from a lending platform co-founded by one of its advisers, trapping existing depositors.

Trump Media & Technology Group reported a $405.9 million loss in the first quarter of 2026, driven almost entirely by unrealised markdowns on the cryptocurrency it had accumulated. The company spent roughly $2 billion purchasing Bitcoin near market peaks the previous summer.

What happens next

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has proposed banning elected officials and their spouses from issuing or promoting crypto tokens. She pushed for similar provisions during GENIUS Act negotiations, but the restrictions were stripped from the final bill.

The proposal faces long odds in a Congress that has largely embraced the industry. Visa, Mastercard, and 140 other firms recently launched a competing stablecoin built on the GENIUS Act framework, underscoring how quickly institutional crypto is maturing under the new rules.

The retail market tells a different story. More than $600 million was stolen from decentralised finance protocols in the first half of 2026, and the Nansen data suggests the president’s own token has cost ordinary buyers nearly four times what was lost to hackers.