Trump's meme coin attracted lots of new-to-crypto buyers
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Two new data points suggest that President Trump's meme coin attracted lots of new people to cryptocurrency — and while plenty made money, it's not clear how much profit is left to be had.
Why it matters: Trump's coin instantly created tens of billions of dollars in new paper wealth for him, but also caused blowback from crypto luminaries who thought the offering hurt the whole industry's credibility.
Flashback: Official Trump was launched on Friday and Melania Meme was launched on Sunday.
- Both popped in price initially, but markets for both have also calmed down quite a bit. That said, neither have shrank down to nothing.
- In fact, the president's token is in the top 30 cryptocurrencies, by market cap — not many new issuances rank that high that quickly, this despite the fact that it's down 9% over the last day and about 50% from its highs.
By the numbers: Most wallets that hold the first family's new meme coins only have around $100 worth, according to research by Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics firm.
- Chainalysis used its analytical tools to break down the early buyers of the meme coin in a thread on X, finding that it's largely small buyers, many of whom may be using blockchains for the first time.
- Half the buyers created a new wallet on the blockchain that supports the Trump token, Solana, that day.
- Roughly the same portion had never bought an altcoin on Solana before.
- 80% of all wallets with one of the first family's tokens have less than $1,000 in Solana assets in their wallet.
Show me the money: Of the buyers that can be seen with Chainalysis's on chain analytics, folks aren't losing money, so far.
- 77% have earned a little bit (less than $100), but in general, buyers are breaking even, Chainalysis says.
- 60 big shots have earned more than $10 million.
Notably, a lot of people don't actually use a blockchain when they invest. Instead, they go through mobile apps, such as Crypto.com, Coinbase and Kraken, so that their activity wouldn't be legible to tools like those Chainalysis uses.
- But market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, which has proprietary tools for monitoring activity in mobile apps, shared some research with Axios that shows crypto apps downloads also surged from Thursday to Wednesday, suggesting that the interest of the general public had been piqued by the new administration.
- Crypto.com, Kraken, Coinbase and Binance apps were all up sharply versus the prior seven days. Crypto.com did the best, at 147%, with Binance coming in right at 100% growth for the period.
- The relatively new app, Moonshot, which the Official Trump token team touted as the best way to buy the coin, had the largest week-over-week growth of all.
- Versus the same week in the prior year, downloads were wildly higher, with Coinbase showing the strongest gain at 665%.
What we're watching: Whether the teams behind these coins make new announcements to make the tokens more appealing.
- They could offer special benefits to holders, like a fan club card.
- Or they could announce that they will burn much of the unreleased supply, which would effectively be a boost to early buyers.
- The Trump Organization, via its affiliates who own up to 80% of the unreleased tokens, can start selling the next tranche in April.
