this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2026
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Leopards Ate My Face

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[–] ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world 131 points 3 months ago (7 children)

Wasn't this exactly by design? Get lots of supporters to buy in, get the price to surge, and then sell at a profit (the good old 'pump and dump')?

[–] Lemmyoutofhere@lemmy.ca 78 points 3 months ago

Basically a way for foreign actors to make bribes.

[–] OhmsLawn@lemmy.world 21 points 3 months ago

Yeah. Assuming he implemented it the way one would expect, the coin value doesn't matter to him at all.

[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I thought he got a percent of every transaction, I swear I heard that at one point. If that is the case then all he would care about is making sure it stays volatile.

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 5 points 3 months ago

That's it, he makes money going up or going down.

[–] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 9 points 3 months ago

It's literally how these things work. No one gets rich off meme coins except the people selling at the start.

[–] skisnow@lemmy.ca 8 points 3 months ago

They don’t even need to sell. The price could drop to zero, Trump already made his money on the initial sale of the coins.

Nobody sane expected the price to go up; the whole thing existed to provide a veneer of plausible deniability for illegal bribes.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Unless I'm thinking of a different Trump crypto grift, I'm pretty sure that they blocked wallets from sending/selling the coin after they've bought it. So only a handful of specific wallets would have the ability to sell.

So even if a person got in early and watched the price go up, as soon as they tried to realize those profits, they'd find out that they can't sell the tokens.

[–] Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 months ago

Yeah, this is just news for the absolutely 100% idiotic people who purchased then.

I cannot stress enough how profoundly stupid these people were. How completely and utterly hopelessly dumb they are.

[–] null@lemmy.org 42 points 3 months ago

It served its purpose of allowing Trump to openly accept bribes.

[–] romanticremedy@lemmy.blahaj.zone 37 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Total disaster for the bag holders, not for those who pump and dumped

[–] demlet@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago

Yep,the scam worked exactly as planned. If only they were half as competent at governing as they are at scamming their cult members.

[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 34 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Whether the Trump family was directly involved in a rug pull, it made gangbusters business, raking in over $100 million in trading fees in just two weeks post-launch.

This was the point of the TrumpCoin scam, not its price. However the coin's value does reflect on the worthlessness of Trump's name.

[–] HumanOnEarth@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

That was certainly not the only point.

It sounds like you're implying the coin just plummeted at random, and there weren't any insiders that sold the coin at its highs, knowing it would collapse?

[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 months ago

I mean perhaps if you consider the whole Trump aligned insider class sure they know when to buy low, sell high. But the Trump family themselves make out like bandits from trading fees alone, no matter the price.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

It appears like that was exactly the point they were making.

[–] JoMiran@lemmy.ml 29 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Trump supporter checking in on his $TRUMP investment:

[–] P00ptart@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

How have I never seen this before?!?

[–] FauxPseudo@lemmy.world 24 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Note: you can't sell without permission so anyone that sold did so with explicit permission knowing that the price would tank.

[–] wuffah@lemmy.world 13 points 3 months ago

Whether the Trump family was directly involved in a rug pull, it made gangbusters business, raking in over $100 million in trading fees in just two weeks post-launch. As of January, the Financial Times reported that the $TRUMP coin, and it the First Lady’s $MELANIA that followed, have generated about $427mn in sales and trading fees.

Sounds like it worked exactly as intended.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 13 points 3 months ago

I really can't imagine any situation where I might feel sympathy for someone who lost money on a memecoin.

[–] Heavybell@lemmy.world 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Who even buys meme coins, seriously? It's not like you can even buy stuff with them, right?

[–] Aqarius@lemmy.world 11 points 3 months ago

I've heard multiple stories of people spending stupid money on goldplated Trump $1000 bills and trying to deposit them in a bank.

[–] addie@feddit.uk 8 points 3 months ago

But at least the Trump phone will be okay, right?

[–] Gork@sopuli.xyz 5 points 3 months ago

Ah yes the guy who famously said that he knows nothing about it other than he launched it. 🙄

[–] frustrated_phagocytosis@fedia.io 5 points 3 months ago

Did he extract value from the fiasco without risking anything personally? Then it worked as intended.