FT: MELANIA meme token insiders have made over $150 million including presale

What’s new? According to a Financial Times on-chain analysis, a small group of traders made almost $100 million in profits from Melania Trump’s MELANIA meme token within minutes of its launch. Thus, 20 wallets bought $2,6 million worth of coins less than three minutes before Donald Trump announced the launch of the spouse’s coin on January 19 on his social network Truth Social.

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What else is known? The MELANIA token appeared two days after the US President’s coin with the ticker TRUMP, the launch of which was not accompanied by similar activity. Thus, the distribution of TRUMP began a few seconds after the official disclosure, but the early activity in the case of MELANIA may indicate insider trading.

Both assets act as speculative instruments and are exempt from regulation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The SEC’s current view is that such trades are not subject to federal insider trading rules.

The wallets involved in MELANIA’s pre-launch accumulation have drawn attention because of their possible ties to Hayden Davis, a Texas-based crypto entrepreneur. Davis, previously linked to the scandalous LIBRA token, has denied profiting from the MELANIA issue. In an interview with independent journalist Stephen Findeisen (Coffeezilla), he stated, “There was no money made from the Melania team. Zero.”

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However, the FT’s blockchain analysis using Bubblemaps tools traced the early purchases to the accounts of businesses linked to Davis.

The creators of MELANIA, working through MKT World LLC in Delaware, withdrew $64,7 million from initial sales and fees, in addition to $99,6 million accumulated by early traders.

MKT World, which has been used by Melania Trump for various ventures since 2021, has yet to clarify its role or profit-sharing structure. The First Lady has not publicly commented on market activity or management of the token.

In the first 24 hours after the launch of futures trading, TRUMP and MELANIA volumes topped $50 billion, and MELANIA-USDT open interest jumped 56% in just 90 minutes. The Solana network struggled with the load, recording 10 million transactions and $1,25 billion in volume, while the Phantom wallet and Coinbase exchange faced a restriction due to overloading.

A few weeks later, developer-affiliated wallets were found selling more than 31 million MELANIA through one-way liquidity provision, leading to a sharp drop from a peak of $13 to $0,38.

According to FT, similar wallet patterns were evident in the LIBRA scandal, indicating a recurring strategy of using high-profile individuals to speculate on cryptocurrency.

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The price of MELANIA stabilized at around $0,32 by May 6. Thus, the 800 million tokens held by the organizers are valued at $256 million. The process of unlocking tokens began on February 19, and 3% of the supply has already been issued, with monthly distributions of 2,25% thereafter.