Nearly 1 million wallets that bought President Donald Trump’s official memecoin have recorded losses since the token launched in January 2025, underscoring how sharply the market has turned against one of the most politically visible crypto assets of the year.
Analytics firm Nansen found that 988,905 of the roughly 1.48 million wallets that bought the Official Trump token were in the red by the end of June. The losses, including both realized losses and paper losses on tokens still held, totaled $3.81 billion.
That means about two out of every three wallets that bought the token had lost money.
The token, launched in January 2025, initially surged in a wave of political attention, speculative demand and memecoin-style momentum. Early buyers entered below $1 before the token climbed toward $75 two days after launch. By the end of June, however, the market had reversed sharply. TRUMP recently traded around $1.78, down roughly 97% from its January peak.
The gains were heavily concentrated among early buyers. Nansen found that 492,285 wallets were in profit, with combined gains of $4.04 billion. Across all tracked wallets, gains and losses netted out to roughly $236 million.
That figure has drawn renewed scrutiny because Trump’s annual financial disclosure showed a $636 million payout tied to the token. The disclosure also listed more than $1.4 billion in total crypto-related income for 2025, including hundreds of millions of dollars connected to World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s DeFi project.
The imbalance has sharpened criticism of politically linked tokens, especially when project insiders, issuers or affiliated entities appear to generate substantial income while a majority of buyers suffer losses.
Trump has dismissed criticism of his crypto earnings, saying his money is managed by outside institutions and arguing that investors have benefited from rising markets. The White House has defended the administration’s crypto stance, saying Trump has pushed to make the United States a global crypto hub.
The TRUMP token’s decline comes as the broader crypto market has weakened from its highs. Bitcoin has fallen sharply from its October record above $126,000, adding pressure across speculative tokens. TRUMP’s market capitalization has dropped to about $425 million, far below its nearly $15 billion peak in January.
The pressure is not limited to the memecoin.
Nansen also examined WLFI, the governance token of World Liberty Financial. Of the 26,663 wallets tracked buying WLFI on secondary markets, 85% had recorded losses. Those wallets showed $83 million in losses against $23 million in gains.
The figure excludes 241,651 wallets that bought WLFI directly through the project’s token sales, meaning the public data likely captures only part of total investor losses. Exchange-based activity is also harder to trace publicly, limiting the full view of market performance.
WLFI recently traded around $0.056, down more than 80% since secondary trading opened last September.
World Liberty Financial has attributed the token’s decline to broader market weakness rather than project-specific problems.
The losses arrive as Congress weighs new crypto market structure legislation. Democrats have pushed for ethics provisions that would restrict crypto dealings by federal officials, including proposals to bar elected officials and their spouses from issuing or sponsoring tokens.
Those proposals have gained attention as Trump-linked crypto projects become a larger part of the political and financial debate around digital assets.
For now, the data points to a stark outcome: the Trump family’s crypto-linked income has grown substantially, while most tracked buyers of its flagship political memecoin are underwater.
The Trump Token Did What Memecoins Usually Do: Early Wallets Ate, Late Buyers Got Buried
The numbers are ugly.
Not “crypto is volatile” ugly.
I mean the kind of ugly where the chart tells you exactly who arrived early, who got paid, and who showed up late holding the political merch bag.
Nearly 1 million wallets lost money on TRUMP.
That is the real headline.
Not the branding. Not the patriotic wrapper. Not the “crypto capital of the world” talk. The trade itself was brutal. Two-thirds of buyers underwater. $3.81 billion in combined realized and paper losses. A token down about 97% from its peak.
That is not a community movement.
That is a wealth transfer with campaign-rally lighting.
And the craziest part? Across all tracked wallets, the net gain was only about $236 million. Meanwhile, Trump’s disclosed payout tied to the token was $636 million.
That gap matters.
Because it means the memecoin produced far more money for the person attached to the brand than for buyers as a group.
That is the part people should sit with.
The early wallets did fine. Of course they did. They entered below $1, watched the thing rip toward $75, and had the cleanest exit window imaginable. That is how these launches work when the hype is radioactive and the supply dynamics are not friendly to late buyers.
Early buyers get optionality.
Late buyers get volatility.
The late crowd was buying a story, not a structure.
And the story was powerful. Trump. Politics. Crypto. Memecoin mania. January launch energy. A market still hungry for narrative trades. That combo was always going to attract retail.
But narrative does not create a floor.
Liquidity does.
And once the bid disappears, the flag, the slogan, the ticker, the Telegram hype — none of it matters. Price goes where supply tells it to go.
Down.
Hard.
The 97% drop is not surprising. It is the standard memecoin death spiral after attention peaks. The only difference here is the political celebrity attached to it.
That makes it bigger.
Not cleaner.
I would not treat this like a normal failed token. It is more important than that. TRUMP became a live test of what happens when political identity, speculative crypto and insider economics collide in public.
The result?
Most wallets lost.
A small group won.
The brand owner got paid.
That is the entire memecoin business model, stripped of the jokes.
WLFI does not look much better. Secondary-market buyers are mostly underwater there too, with 85% of tracked wallets showing losses. Different wrapper. Same pain. Governance token instead of memecoin. DeFi branding instead of political meme energy. But the outcome still leans in the same direction: retail buyers chasing affiliation and upside while insiders or early participants sit closer to the money pipe.
To be fair, the broader market did roll over. Bitcoin getting cut nearly in half from its October record would hurt almost everything speculative. No token trades in isolation when the big asset is bleeding.
But I don’t buy the idea that broad market weakness explains all of this.
A token can fall because the market is weak.
A token does not fall 97% from peak while two-thirds of wallets lose money and still get treated like some ordinary beta trade.
That is not beta.
That is bad structure meeting hype exhaustion.
The political angle makes the regulatory fight unavoidable. If elected officials, candidates or their families can issue or sponsor tokens while supporters buy into the trade, the conflict-of-interest problem is obvious. You do not need a law degree to see it.
Who benefits?
Who buys?
Who has information?
Who controls supply?
Who gets paid before the public understands the risk?
Those are not abstract ethics questions. They are market structure questions.
And this one has receipts.
If Congress is serious about crypto rules, this is exactly the kind of case that will be used to argue for restrictions. Not because all political crypto is illegal or all memecoins are scams. That is too lazy.
The sharper point is this: political influence can turn a speculative token into a loyalty product.
That is dangerous.
People do not buy it like they buy a random dog coin. They buy it because the brand means something to them. Because it feels like participation. Because they think they are aligned with power.
That makes the exit liquidity stickier.
And more vulnerable.
My read? TRUMP was never mainly about utility. It was attention packaged as an asset. That can work for a while. Sometimes spectacularly. But once attention fades and early wallets distribute, the price has nothing sturdy underneath.
No cash flow.
No serious governance value.
No real adoption base that justifies peak pricing.
Just the hope that someone later will pay more.
That game is old.
The political branding just made it louder.
What would I do here?
I would not touch the bounce unless I was trading it with tight risk and zero emotional attachment. No “community.” No “movement.” No “long-term conviction.” Just chart, liquidity, exit.
For everyone else, the lesson is simple: when a token tied to a powerful figure pumps this hard this fast, assume the easy money was made before you saw the headline.
By the time retail feels safe, the trade is usually already hunting for bag-holders.