The Mysterious Insider Who Made Millions of Dollars Trading Trump and Melania Meme Coins

The president and first lady's launch of a new meme coin caught many off guard over the weekend. But some traders made big bets early and were rewarded.

A new meme coin, launched by former President Donald Trump, has quickly become one of the hottest topics in the crypto world. But some traders were able to make a killing by getting in on the ground floor — and new details are emerging about how they might have done it.

When Trump announced his own Solana meme coin on Friday, a lot of people made a lot of money quickly — but at least one trader who made a killing made his bet much quicker than most.

On Friday, four hours before Trump announced the launch of his own Solana meme Coin TRUMP, an anonymous user topped up more than $1 million worth of SOL in a brand new crypto wallet (identified as "6QSc2") and waited for it to appreciate.

Within 30 seconds of Trump’s announcement of the meme coin on Truth Social on Friday night, the wallet bought more than 5.9 million TRUMP tokens. Within a few hours, the value of these tokens exceeded $116 million.

According to analysis by on-chain research firm Bubblemaps, the trader then divided a large number of TRUMP tokens into 10 different Solana wallets and began selling them in large quantities the next day. As of Monday morning, the trader had sold $85 million worth of TRUMP and held another $75 million, according to Bubblemaps. Now, these wallets together hold only $18 million worth of meme coins, and the trader has presumably sold most of his positions.

But the story doesn’t end there. On Sunday, First Lady Melania Trump followed her husband’s lead by launching her own meme coin — and the lucky trader got in early again.

Within a minute and a half of the First Lady’s post about the MELANIA token on Truth Social, and a minute before information about the token was posted to X, one of the wallets associated with the user bought a large amount of MELANIA tokens.

The trader sold $45 million worth of TRUMP tokens, apparently to build a huge MELANIA position, causing the TRUMP token to plummet nearly 50% in a few minutes on Sunday afternoon, according to Bubblemaps.

Several other early buyers of TRUMP tokens also appeared to profit handsomely, leading to suspicions of widespread insider trading, according to rumors on X. Decrypt was unable to confirm whether any insider information existed, but the large number of associated wallets associated with the “6QSc2” account is enough to raise eyebrows.

This is particularly suspicious considering that the trader placed such a large buy order before most cryptocurrency users learned of the news and realized that this was not an elaborate hack.

However, it is also possible that the trader was in the right place at the right time, having just created a new wallet, and made the right call in the nick of time. The associated wallet has bought and sold a lot of meme coins in the past three months, at least, according to the transaction history. The trader even bought some of Hawk Tuah's girl's meme coins when they dropped.

It is also possible, though, that the trader was well-connected and received word of Trump’s upcoming meme coin. If there was indeed insider information, the leak may not have come from within Trump’s inner circle or the crypto team.

Several Solana decentralized finance projects, such as Jupiter, Meteora, and Moonshot, disclosed that they were working with the Trump Token team in advance to ensure a smooth launch, according to reports over the weekend.

The token led to an unprecedented level of activity on the Solana network, and many hands were likely on deck to keep the infrastructure functioning properly. It is unclear how many employees at these projects knew about the token plans in advance, however, and there is currently no evidence of any wrongdoing by any of the providers.

At least one prominent crypto figure, however, appears to have boasted publicly about receiving advance notice of the upcoming MELANIA token. Ran Neuner, co-Founder and CEO of blockchain investment fund Onchain Capital, acknowledged as much in a post on X on Monday, lamenting that the Trumps are now “scamming at the expense of the crypto community.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Neuner wrote. “As my timeline shows I knew about the MELANIA token before it was out, and I obviously profited handsomely from it.”

In fact, Neuner announced the upcoming launch of the MELANIA token nearly 90 minutes before the First Lady first announced it on Truth Social.

Decrypt reached out to Neuner regarding this post but did not receive a response.

Trump coin is up 8% on Tuesday, trading at $43.94 at the time of writing, with a fully diluted value of over $43 billion. Meanwhile, MELANIA is down nearly 24% on the day, trading at $4.60 at the time of writing, with a fully diluted value of $4.6 billion.