Continued
“… New cryptocurrencies often shoot up in price, making traders billionaires on paper, only to collapse when the coins’ holders start selling.
That is especially true of memecoins, which are prone to rapid swings in price as their internet popularity fluctuates. Prices can also vary across platforms, making it difficult to pin down a coin’s actual value.
… Within a minute of the coin’s launch, a crypto trader had accumulated a $1 million position, according to an
analysis of public transaction data by the crypto data firm Bubblemaps, which posted its findings on social media.
… The coin’s price surged, and the trader’s account soon sold off holdings worth $20 million. The analysis prompted speculation on social media about whether an insider with advance knowledge of the coin’s launch had been able to make quick profits. (Bubblemaps did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
Conor Grogan, a director at Coinbase, one of the largest trading platforms in the United States,
estimated in a social media post that as of Saturday, the Trump team had made $58 million in fees from all of the $Trump sales — even without selling its own reserve of tokens to the open marketplace.
It also appears that the Trump team may be t
ransferring some of its tokens onto an overseas trading platform called Bybit,
which is not allowed to execute trades in the United States,Mr. Grogan noted. Bybit has recently been the focus of enforcement actions by international cryptocurrency
regulators.
The Trump coin’s launch immediately created new opportunities for executives, crypto traders and even major companies to curry favor with the Trump administration. …”
