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Trump Crypto Scheme Allegations: Market Forces, Not Insider Trading
by Antonio Graceffo Jul. 7, 2026 11:20 am51 Comments
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Trump-hating California Governor Gavin Newsom echoed claims made by numerous Democrat lawmakers and their mainstream media allies when he tweeted, “Nearly a million people lost BILLIONS on Trump’s crypto scheme while a handful of insiders made a fortune. This is corruption on a scale our country has never seen.”
Newsom was referring to a Nansen blockchain analysis report on the $TRUMP memecoin, which launched on the Solana blockchain on January 17, 2025, three days before Trump’s inauguration. However, people losing money on a public cryptocurrency offering is not proof of wrongdoing, but rather a normal market dynamic.
Blockchain analytics firm Nansen found that 988,905 accounts had lost money on the token through the end of June 2026, with combined losses of $3.81 billion, representing about two out of three buyers. A separate tally by NBC News puts cumulative losses at $4.5 billion across roughly 1 million wallets since trading began in January 2025.
Trump’s annual financial disclosure showed a $636 million payout from the token, nearly half of the $1.4 billion he made from the crypto industry in 2025. Early and sophisticated traders captured roughly $4 billion in profit over the same period.
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The token’s price rose from an initial $6 to a peak of $75.35 within hours of launch before falling nearly 98 percent to $1.69 as of early July 2026. A decline of this magnitude, combined with the absence of cash flow or an underlying asset, is consistent with memecoins as a category rather than a trait unique to $TRUMP. Roughly 97 percent of memecoins fail entirely, and the sequence of early buyers profiting while later buyers lose money is standard for any asset that spikes and then declines, requiring no coordinated action or special information.
Compared with the traditional stock market, public buyers had more equitable access to the $TRUMP token from the start because no meaningful quantity of tokens was sold privately before launch. By contrast, when companies go public, shares are often sold privately to venture investors long before ordinary investors have access.
Unlike Apple, which raised a private venture capital round in January 1978 by selling equity to investors including Venrock, Sequoia Capital, and Arthur Rock nearly two years before its December 1980 IPO, $TRUMP had no equivalent private funding round involving outside investors. Its supply structure, detailed below, kept the entire public tranche open to any buyer from the moment of launch, with no discounted pre-sale available only to select investors.
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Apple’s private-round investors bought in at a fraction of the eventual $22 IPO price. Sequoia Capital’s $150,000 investment was worth more than $6 million by the time it sold its stake just before the IPO. Arthur Rock’s shares were worth $21.8 million at the time of the IPO.
Public investors who bought Apple stock after the 1980 IPO experienced a markedly different outcome. The stock spent much of the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s stagnant or declining. By 1997, the company’s market capitalization was roughly $2.3 billion, only slightly above its IPO-day valuation. Apple also came within about 90 days of bankruptcy before receiving a rescue investment from Microsoft.
This pattern, in which early entrants profit while later investors experience flat or negative returns over long holding periods, is common in publicly traded equities. It is not unique to memecoins.
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Of the token’s 1 billion total supply, only 20 percent was liquid at launch. That amount was split evenly between a public sale and exchange liquidity. The remaining 80 percent was allocated to CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight Fight LLC, two entities largely owned by Trump-related interests, under a vesting schedule extending through 2028.
That allocation was issuer-held supply retained by the founders rather than sold to any third party. When sold, it becomes available at prevailing market prices, not at a private, discounted rate. As of mid-2026, roughly 900,000 tokens were unlocking daily on the open market from this allocation. The smart contract also directs a share of every trade’s fees to these two entities. Cointelegraph estimated this fee stream at more than $320 million. Other estimates placed it closer to $400 million
Trump promoted the token on his Truth Social account at launch, encouraging followers to buy it. By definition, this was not insider trading because the recommendation was made publicly. There was no allegation that he traded based on material, nonpublic information or that buyers had access to nonpublic information regarding the token’s price or the timing of purchases and sales.
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Separate from the launch-day promotion, allegations have circulated that some traders had insider access or received leaked information before an April 2025 announcement that the top 220 holders of $TRUMP would be invited to a private dinner with the president. The top 25 holders were also offered an additional VIP reception.
However, the allegations do not specify what information was allegedly leaked or who was responsible for the leak or who received the information.
Following the public announcement on April 23, the token’s price rose from roughly $9 to over $15 within about a day, a jump of 50 to 70 percent, as buyers rushed to acquire enough tokens to qualify for a seat.
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No named source, specific trader, or verifiable primary report has been located that substantiates these allegations. The claim appears to originate from a single, uncited sentence on Wikipedia’s page for the token, and has not been found repeated with sourcing in any primary news report reviewed for this article.
Even if such advance knowledge existed, the underlying information would have been the timing of a promotional marketing announcement, not material information about a company’s financial condition, which is the type of information insider-trading law is built to address. The subsequent price increase was not scheduled or guaranteed. It was the ordinary result of public buyers independently responding to public news about a freely traded asset.
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No U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission insider-trading charge has been filed against Trump-linked entities over $TRUMP.
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In a February 2025 statement, the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance said memecoins are “akin to collectibles” and do not constitute securities under federal law. As a result, typical memecoin transactions fall outside the securities registration and insider-trading framework that applies to regulated securities markets.
No blockchain analyses or media reports reviewed for this article documented wash trading, spoofing, or coordinated price manipulation by the issuing entities. No legal charges or lawsuits have been filed on those grounds.
