Trump's Meme Coin Empire Is About to Explode With Millions of New Tokens

Gizmodo

17-07-2025

Millions of Trump meme coins could flood the crypto market starting this week, potentially reshaping the future of one of the most controversial cryptocurrencies in circulation.
Entities affiliated with President Donald Trump now have the right to sell a large portion of the meme coin named after him, $TRUMP, starting Wednesday July 17. The move could unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in digital tokens, intensifying scrutiny over Trump's growing involvement in crypto and raising fresh questions about potential conflicts of interest.
The $TRUMP token launched on January 17, just three days before Trump officially returned to the White House. A total of 1 billion $TRUMP tokens were created, but only 200 million have been circulating in the market. The remaining 800 million, or 80 percent of the total supply, are held by two entities: CIC Digital LLC, a Trump Organization affiliate, and Fight Fight Fight LLC, another company tied to the former president, according to the official $TRUMP website gettrumpmemes.com.
A vesting schedule outlined on the site allows the token creators to gradually release more of the supply over a three-year period.
Back in April, CIC and its partners were permitted to sell up to 40 million tokens but chose not to. As of July 17, they are authorized to sell an additional 50 million. That brings the total available for sale to 90 million $TRUMP tokens, almost half of the current circulating supply.
At current market price of $10.06, those tokens are worth more than $900 million.
So far, it is unclear whether Trump-linked entities plan to sell. But one potential buyer has already stepped up: crypto billionaire Justin Sun.
'We are committed to buying $100M of $TRUMP! Together, $TRUMP and #TRON are the future of Crypto,' Sun posted on X on July 9. 'This move highlights our belief in collaborating across ecosystems to grow the crypto landscape with communities such as @GetTrumpMemes.' '$TRUMP on #TRON is the currency of #MAGA!'
Sun is no stranger to controversy. In March 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged him with fraud and market manipulation, accusing him of artificially inflating trading volume for his TRX and BTT tokens and paying celebrities to promote them without proper disclosure.
We are committed to buying $100M of $TRUMP! Together, $TRUMP and #TRON are the future of Crypto.
This move highlights our belief in collaborating across ecosystems to grow the crypto landscape with communities such as @GetTrumpMemes.$TRUMP on #TRON is the currency of #MAGA!…
— H.E. Justin Sun 🍌 (@justinsuntron) July 9, 2025If CIC Digital and its partners choose to sell the newly unlocked tokens, it would dramatically increase the $TRUMP coin supply, testing the strength of demand and the staying power of Trump's crypto brand. The timing is crucial. $TRUMP has already seen wild fluctuations. It briefly hit $73.43 the day before Trump's second inauguration, giving it a market cap of $14.7 billion. Today, it has crashed to around $2 billion, wiping out more than $12 billion in market value.
Despite the collapse, the Trump crypto ecosystem has been a moneymaker. The initial $TRUMP launch earned Trump-linked companies more than $350 million in transaction fees, according to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. Like credit card processors or ticketing platforms, the entities behind $TRUMP take a cut every time someone buys or sells the token.
The coin itself has no underlying utility. Like all meme coins, $TRUMP has no intrinsic value or real-world use case. Its price is driven almost entirely by hype, fandom, and political alignment.
Still, Trump's allies are treating it as a serious business. The website puts it bluntly: 'Trump memes are intended to function as an expression of support for, and engagement with, the ideals and beliefs embodied by the symbol $Trump.'
The meme coin is just one part of a much broader and growing Trump family crypto empire.
In May, Justin Sun attended a Trump-hosted dinner for top crypto investors at his golf club in Virginia. The event drew criticism from Democrats, who warned that Trump's involvement in crypto opens him up to foreign influence and corruption risks.
The two entities controlling the majority of $TRUMP tokens do not disclose the president's personal stake, making it impossible to know how much Trump himself owns.
Meanwhile, his sons are building out their own blockchain ambitions. In September 2024, they launched World Liberty Financial, WLFI, a crypto firm whose stablecoin, USD1, is pegged to the U.S. dollar and has already reached a market value of $2.2 billion, according to CoinGecko. While President Trump was listed as 'co-founder emeritus' prior to re-entering office, Donald Jr., Eric, and Barron Trump are all listed as co-founders.
In March, Eric Trump teamed up with crypto mining company Hut 8 to launch American Bitcoin Corp, where he now serves as chief strategy officer. The company went public in May and already holds around $22 million worth of Bitcoin, with plans to acquire more. Bitcoin mining, the process of using powerful computers to generate new Bitcoins, is energy-intensive but can be highly profitable, especially in a bull market.
Since returning to power, Trump has declared himself the 'crypto president.' And unlike his predecessor Joe Biden, whose the SEC was notoriously aggressive toward the sector, Trump's administration has embraced crypto with open arms. Enforcement actions against crypto firms have been paused or dropped. The SEC issued guidance suggesting even meme coins should not be classified as securities. Major U.S. exchanges like Coinbase have resumed or expanded listings of meme tokens and other riskier assets.
In this environment, the Trump family has found fertile ground to build and profit from blockchain-based ventures. But the stakes are enormous. If Trump-linked entities dump their $TRUMP holdings onto the open market, it could either validate the coin's staying power or crash its value and open the president to new criticism.
For now, the crypto world is watching and waiting.