764K Trump Meme Coin Purchasers Reportedly Lost Money

President Donald Trump’s election last year was good news for the cryptocurrency industry.

Smaller investors in the Trump-branded $TRUMP meme coin introduced earlier this year apparently haven’t been as fortunate.

Roughly 764,000 wallets that purchased the token have lost money on their investment, CNBC reported Tuesday (May 6), citing Chainalysis data.

Most of these wallets — accounts that store keys needed to access crypto holdings — held smaller amounts of $TRUMP, the report said. Of the approximately 2 million wallets that have purchased the coin, 58 made more than $10 million each, or around $1.1 billion in gains.

The CNBC report notes that the $TRUMP token, which jumped in popularity after being connected to the beginning of Trump’s second term, has swung sharply in price, offering investors highly uneven returns.

Interest in the coin soared more than 50% when the project’s website promised the top 220 holders a ticket to a dinner with the president later this month, the report added.

Trump debuted the token days before taking office, with First Lady Melania Trump introducing her meme coin soon after. The move drew rebukes from some crypto industry figures, who said Trump was hurting the credibility of digital assets.

As noted here at the time, the meme coin sector is a divisive one, fueling criticism that the crypto industry is risky and frivolous. Meme coins rely on social media momentum that can evaporate as quickly as it materializes.

Trump promised to turn the U.S. into the “crypto capital of the planet,” and — as PYMNTS wrote Tuesday — he will need cryptocurrency legislation for this to happen.

“But while bills for both stablecoin regulations and market structure legislation were expected within his administration’s first 100 days, little concrete progress has been made by lawmakers in advancing a comprehensive domestic policy framework — particularly as it relates to crypto markets,” that report said.

Based on the events surrounding a Tuesday House hearing into digital asset legislation, PYMNTS added, it might take another 100 days for tempers to cool on both sides of the aisle.

The planned hearing was supposed to be a bipartisan event, though it derailed when several Democrats walked out, protesting Republicans’ refusal to put provisions into the legislation that would block Trump from enriching himself from crypto.

“The political conflict marks a sharp turn in what was once a relatively bipartisan area of interest and risks turning both stablecoin oversight and crypto market clarity from a regulatory challenge into a political football being thrown back and forth,” PYMNTS wrote.