According to Financial Times analysis, a small cohort of traders secured nearly $100 million in profits from Melania Trump’s MELANIA token within minutes of its market debut.

Insider trading allegations

Its on-chain analysis suggests that two dozen digital wallets purchased $2.6 million worth of tokens less than three minutes before Trump’s Jan. 19 post on Truth Social announced the coin’s launch.

The subsequent price surge enabled rapid liquidation, with 81% of the sales executed within 12 hours.

The MELANIA token’s release followed President Donald Trump’s TRUMP coin, launched two days earlier without similar pre-announcement activity. While TRUMP’s distribution began seconds after its official disclosure, the early activity in MELANIA’s case highlights the potential for exploitation during memecoin launches.

These tokens, devoid of utility beyond dinner with the president, operate as speculative instruments and are now exempt from securities regulations. Per the SEC’s current view, such trades fall outside federal insider-trading rules.

The wallets involved in the pre-launch accumulation of MELANIA have drawn attention for their possible links to Hayden Davis, a Texas-based crypto entrepreneur.

Davis, previously associated with the controversial LIBRA token tied to Argentina’s President Javier Milei, denied profiting from the MELANIA release, stating in an interview with independent journalist Stephen Findeisen (Coffeezilla), “There was no money made from the Melania team. Zero.”

However, blockchain analysis by FT using Bubblemaps traced early purchases to accounts connected to ventures linked with Davis.

Organizers behind MELANIA, operating through Delaware-based MKT World LLC, have reportedly withdrawn $64.7 million in primary sales and fees, separate from the $99.6 million amassed by early traders.

MKT World, previously used by Melania Trump for various ventures since 2021, has yet to clarify its precise role or profit-sharing structure. The First Lady has not commented publicly on the token’s market activity or governance.

Melania Trump and crypto

Volatility around MELANIA has been punctuated by prior controversies and trading frenzies linked to Trump-family-branded tokens.

In the first 24 hours after futures trading launched, perpetual trading across TRUMP and MELANIA exceeded $50 billion, with MELANIA-USDT open interest spiking 56% in just 90 minutes. Solana’s network struggled under the load, recording 10 million transactions and $1.25 billion in volume, while services such as Phantom and Coinbase faced throttling due to congestion.

Weeks later, developer-linked wallets were traced selling over 31 million MELANIA through unilateral liquidity provisioning, driving a steep drop from a peak of $13 to $0.38 before a modest recovery.

Further, prior ventures involving Melania Trump’s digital initiatives had faced scrutiny, including allegations of wash trading tied to her “Head of State” NFT in 2022 and an NFT-based philanthropy pitch announced in 2024 targeting foster care programs.

The rapid and lucrative trading around MELANIA further reflects the volatility of politically connected tokens.

The Financial Times reported that similar wallet patterns appeared in the LIBRA scandal, suggesting a recurring strategy of leveraging high-profile figures for crypto speculation.

Ethical concerns have also emerged, with former CFTC chair Tim Massad calling the involvement of presidential families in commercial tokens “plainly wrong” due to potential conflicts of interest.

The price of MELANIA stabilized at approximately $0.32 as of May 5, placing the 800 million tokens retained by organizers at a notional valuation near $260 million.

The token’s unlock schedule began on Feb. 19, releasing 3% of the supply, with monthly distributions of 2.25% planned thereafter.

Despite regulatory gaps and anonymity on-chain, the episode illustrates the growing complexity surrounding political branding in digital assets and the challenges facing retail participants in rapidly evolving crypto markets.

Mentioned in this article

Chicago-based trading giant Jump is returning its U.S. cryptocurrency operations to full strength after scaling it back over the past couple of years due to regulatory scrutiny and uncertainty.

While Jump has maintained its digital assets trading and market-making activity in other parts of the globe, crypto trading volume is now accelerating in the U.S., according to a person familiar with the situation. In addition, Jump is looking to hire a clutch of crypto engineers and plans to start filling U.S. policy and governmental liaison roles in due course, a second person said.

The previous U.S. administration, aided and abetted by anti-crypto regulators and weaponized banking authorities, did its best to choke off the digital assets sector across the States—a situation rapidly reversed under Donald Trump.

Read more: As the SEC Continues Its Crypto Litigation Retreat, Here’s What’s Still Outstanding

Jump found itself at the center of regulatory scrutiny in the wake of the collapse of the Terra Luna stablecoin and FTX. This led to reports of a pullback in the U.S., including the spin-out of Jump’s Wormhole project and a halving of headcount at the Jump Crypto division, which had peaked at about 150 staffers in 2022, according to Bloomberg.

An interesting proposition for Jump would be participation in the U.S. crypto ETF space, where the firm has remained conspicuously absent.

Looking ahead, a solana (SOL) ETF is likely to be granted at some point; Jump is known for its investment and development work in the Solana ecosystem, such as with projects like Firedancer, software designed to improve transaction throughput on the blockchain.

Jump declined to comment.

Read more: Jump Crypto Adds $10M to Industry’s U.S. Political War Chest, Raising PAC to $169M