So imagine just creating this digital joke on
a Friday, like just a picture on the internet
backed by a few lines of code. Right. And then
by Sunday, that exact same joke has morphed into
a $27 billion asset. Which is just insane. Right.
And it's an asset that literally grants you a
private filet mignon dinner with the president
of the United States. Yeah. I mean, it totally
sounds like the plot of some surreal cyberpunk
novel or something. It really does. But it actually
happened. In the process, it completely shattered
our entire understanding of how money, influence,
and the internet actually operate. Welcome to
today's Deep Dive. We're so glad you're here
with us because today we have a real mission.
We're going to unpack the multi -billion dollar
collision of decentralized finance and centralized
political power that occurred in early 2025.
It's a massive story. It is. And for this deep
dive, our source materials is drawn entirely
from a comprehensive Wikipedia article. It details
the creation, the explosion, and, well, the ultimate
fallout of the Trump mean coin. Yeah, but before
we jump into all of that, we really need to set
a very clear ground rule for you, the listener.
Absolutely. Because the source material we are
looking at today contains highly, highly politically
charged content. Yeah. It includes very strong
accusations, intense defenses, and actions that
outraged people on literally both sides of the
political aisle. Right. So it is vital to state
right up front that neither of us are taking
sides here. Not at all. We are not endorsing
any of the viewpoints or the criticisms or the
political strategies mentioned in these sources.
Right. Our sole goal today is just to impartially
report and analyze the factual events. Exactly.
The financial mechanics, the arguments, exactly
as they are documented in the source text. We
are just your guides through the material. Just
laying out the facts. OK. Let's unpack this.
How does an asset born on the internet just three
days before a presidential inauguration, instantly
generate tens of billions of dollars in paper
wealth. Well, what's fascinating here is to understand
the massive ethical and political firestorm that
follows, you really have to understand the mechanics
like how this coin was willed into existence
out of thin air. Right. Because the entire story
is essentially about analog laws. Like laws written
for paper checks. Exactly. Laws written for physical
banks and paper checks completely colliding with
a digital world that moves at the speed of light.
So it all starts on January 17th, 2025. This
is just three days before Donald Trump is inaugurated
for his second term. And the launch is, well,
it's total chaos. Complete chaos. Initially,
there's no official public announcement at all.
The coin just sort of appears on the Solana blockchain.
And for you listening, if you're wondering why
do they use Solana instead of something famous
like Bitcoin, it really comes down to architecture.
Right. The underlying tech. Yeah. Think of blockchains
like highways. Bitcoin is like a one -lane dirt
road. It's highly secure, but it's slow and expensive
to use. Sawana, on the other hand, is like a
12 -lane autobahn with no speed limits and basically
zero tolls. Which is exactly what you need. Right.
That makes it the absolute weapon of choice for
launching meme coins. You need millions of microtransactions
happening in seconds without fees just eating
up all your profit. And because the crypto space
is just notorious for scams, when this dropped,
everyone assumed this new token was a fake. Of
course they did. People are looking at it thinking,
there is no way a meme coin is actually associated
with the incoming president. Yeah, the skepticism
was completely warranted, honestly, given how
many impersonators exist out there. But then,
a few hours later, the confirmation actually
hits. Yeah. A post goes up on X and Truth Social
directly from Donald Trump's official accounts.
And it declares, quote, my new W official Trump
meme is here. And they had a whole website for
it, right? Yeah. GetTrumpMemes .com. It called
it the only official Trump meme, and it featured
this stylized logo of him raising his fist after
the July 2024 assassination attempt. And that
same night, while this big crypto ball is happening,
he's actively promoting it. And this is where
the underlying tokenomics, like the actual math
of the coin, becomes so critical to the story.
The math is wild. It really is. So they minted
exactly one billion coins on the Solana network.
But they didn't just release them all to the
free market for anyone to buy. Oh, not even close.
The distribution is just staggering. Out of that
one billion coins, 800 million were kept by two
entities. Right. CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight
Fight LLC. And both of those are Trump owned
companies. So they kept 80 percent. Yes. 80%.
They only released 200 million coins to the public
in that initial offering. Wow. So let me put
this in perspective for you. Imagine creating
a brand new board game. But before anyone even
sits down to play, you take 80 % of the game's
fake cash and just put it in your own real world
pocket. Right, right. And then you let the public
bid on the remaining 20%. And literally overnight,
because of the hype, the public decides that
remaining 20 % is incredibly valuable. Well,
what's fascinating here is the mathematical illusion
that creates. In finance, we call this a low
float scenario. OK, break that down for us. So
because only 20 % of the coins are available
to trade, it creates an artificial shortage.
You have this massive demand from the public
chasing a tiny supply of coins. Which drives
the price up. Exactly. It drives the price of
a single coin right through. the roof. And market
capitalization is just the price of one coin
multiplied by the total number of coins in existence,
right? Yeah. So that price spike artificially
inflates the value of the 80 % that's just sitting
in the founder's wallets. Within two days, this
quirky math pushed the hypothetical market cap
to $27 billion. $27 billion. Yeah, it made it
the 19th most valuable cryptocurrency in the
entire world. That is just wild. I mean, if they
traditional Wall Street CEO held back 80 % of
the stock just to artificially inflate the price,
the Securities and Exchange Commission would
be kicking down their door the very next morning.
Oh, they absolutely would. Traditional SEC laws
strictly regulate that exact kind of market manipulation.
Right. But cryptocurrency often operates in this
massive gray area. Like, is a meme coin a security,
like a stock? Or is it a commodity, like gold?
Or is it just digital merchandise, like a commemorative
t -shirt? Exactly. Because the law hasn't definitively
answered that question yet, the creators were
able to execute this 80 -20 split perfectly legally
under the current frameworks. But paper wealth
is one thing. If you try to sell that 80 % all
at once, the price just plummets. to zero. Nobody
can absorb that. Right. You crash your own market.
Exactly. However, the sources show the actual
realized cash was also massive and they didn't
even require selling the main stash to get it.
Yeah, a Financial Times analysis broke down the
real -world numbers a few months later. The project
netted at least $350 million in hard cash almost
immediately. Unbelievable. They generated $314
million from the direct sale of the initial public
tokens. But the really ingenious part is the
remaining $36 million that came purely from trading
fees. Wait, how does that work? Are they charging
people a swipe fee, like a credit card company?
Essentially, yes. The smart contract... you know
the underlying code of the token was programmed
so that every single time someone bought or sold
the coin anywhere in the world the code automatically
skimmed a tiny fraction of a percent. Oh, wow.
And it routed it right back to the creator's
wallet. Yeah. It is literally a tollbooth that
never sleeps. That's incredible. And this fundamentally
redefines how modern political figures might
generate instant personal wealth. I mean, historically,
politicians write books or give paid speeches,
right, after they leave office. Sure. Here, wealth
was generated instantaneously automatically before
the term even began. And when you have that much
wealth generated that quickly, It doesn't just
stay on the internet. It bleeds into the real
world. It always does. And that brings us to
April 2025. Because these weren't just coins
sitting in a digital wallet anymore. They became
literal VIP access passes. Yeah, the concept
of access capitalism gets a massive blockchain
upgrade here. This is the moment where traditional
campaign finance laws, the ones monitored by
the Federal Election Commission, face their ultimate
stress test. So the promoters of the coin announced
that the top 220 token holders would get a private
dinner with the president. Just for holding the
coin. Just for holding it. And the absolute top
25 holders. They were promised a VIP White House
tour. Though we should note that tour was later
scrubbed by administration officials right that
got canceled But the dinner the dinner definitely
happened and the moment that promotion was announced
the value of the coin jumped more than 50 % Wow
the utility of the token completely changed in
real time It went from being this speculative
internet joke to a highly coveted direct ticket
to the commander -in -chief Now if you're listening
to this and thinking why on earth would anyone
buy a volatile meme coin just to get a dinner?
Well, you had to picture the scene. Yeah, set
the scene. It's a black -tie optional event held
at the Trump National Golf Club in Washington,
D .C. Outside, you have protesters gathered,
actively chanting, shame, at the attendees as
they walk in. Intense. Very. And inside, it's
filet mignon, pan -seared halibut, and a Trump
organic field green salad. The president actually
speaks for about 15 to 20 minutes from behind
a podium that bears the presidential seal. And
the guest list is what really drew the attention
of regulators and journalists. You had this mix
of crypto insiders, international businessmen,
and people actively looking to leverage their
holdings to influence policy. The details from
the sources are incredible. You have Justin Sun,
a major crypto billionaire, attending. And this
was his first visit to the United States since
being investigated by the U .S. attorney for
the Southern District of New York back in 2021.
That's a big deal. It is. And at this dinner,
four of the highest paying investors, including
Sun, were actually given one hundred thousand
dollar tourbillon watches. Just as a gift. And
it wasn't just established billionaires either.
The volatile nature of the coin allowed savvy
traders to exploit the event as a pure financial
play. Right. Like the guy named Noah. Yeah. There
was an investor identified in the New York Times
only as Noah. He bought $2 .2 million worth of
the token right before the contest, rode the
hype wave as everyone else bought in to get a
seat at the dinner, and then sold his entire
stash at the end. He profited over $950 ,000.
Exactly. NBC News estimated the winners collectively
spent $394 million. Wait, I have to push back
here. I am a little confused. OK. Because the
source material explicitly notes that the coin's
website had a legal disclaimer. Yes, it did.
It stated the coin was not an investment, not
a security, and specifically said it was, quote,
not political and has nothing to do with any
political campaign or government agency. If the
SEC or the FEC sees that, don't they just point
to someone like Javier Selgas? He was the chief
executive of Freitech. And according to The New
York Times, he openly told the SEC that he intended
to purchase 20 million dollars in tokens specifically
to convince the president to lower tariffs on
Mexico. He just said it out loud. Exactly. So
how does the block chain shield him from traditional
bribery or lobbying laws? Like, why wasn't he
arrested right then and there? Well, this raises
an important question and it goes right back
to that theme of analog laws failing in a digital
world. OK. If Selgas had handed a politician
a 20 million dollar suitcase of cash or even
routed it through a traditional super PAC, it
triggers immediate disclosure laws. Sure. Contribution
limits, bribery, statutes. All of it. But because
he bought a piece of digital merchandise on an
open, decentralized exchange, it falls right
through the cracks of the regulatory framework.
He's technically just participating in a free
market, even if his stated intention is explicitly
political influence. So basically anyone anywhere
in the world can just pump millions into this
asset completely anonymously. Precisely. Look
at the GD Culture Group. Oh, yeah. Tell them
about this one. The New York Times reported this
was a tiny company with zero reported revenue
in 2024. None. And they have documented ties
to China, plus an affiliation with TikTok, which
is an app facing a U .S. ban. Right. And yet
this tiny company announced it was spending three
hundred million dollars purchasing crypto, including
this specific meme coin using proceeds from an
unnamed entity in the British Virgin Islands.
Exactly. That is a massive injection of capital
from completely opaque origins. It represents
a completely new frontier for potential foreign
influence. Traditional Campaign finance systems
are built around tracking bank transfers, identifying
physical donors. Right. To prevent foreign governments
from swaying elections. Exactly. But a decentralized
token operates entirely outside the mechanisms
monitored by the Federal Election Commission.
It is borderless and it is pseudonymous. But,
you know, as with everything in the highly speculative
crypto market, what goes up inevitably comes
down. Always. And when everyday retail investors
lose billions of dollars, It doesn't just stay
on the Internet. It triggers massive consumer
protection alarms in Washington. Yeah, the market
dynamics of meme coins are notoriously brutal.
And the ecosystem around this project expanded
incredibly rapidly, drawing in regular people
who had never even touched crypto before. Yeah,
just two days after the launch, the Melania coin
was released and the sources introduced us to
a figure named Hayden Davis. He partially handled
that launch. and he later admitted to a practice
called sniping the liquidity pools. Okay, we
really need to break down what that actually
means because it's a critical mechanism of how
money is extracted from regular people and crypto.
Go for it. Imagine a giant automated bowl containing
dollars and another giant bowl containing the
new tokens. Okay, got the visual. A liquidity
pool is really just a software robot that trades
between those two bowls based on a math formula,
allowing anyone to buy or sell at any time. Okay,
so where does this sniping come in? So sniping
is when an insider or a highly sophisticated
programmer builds a bot with super speed. The
exact millisecond the coin launches and the bowls
are open for business, the bot cuts to the very
front of the line. It buys a massive chunk of
the tokens at absolute bottom basement pennies.
And then... And then it instantly turns around
and sells those exact same tokens to the regular
people waiting behind them in line at a massive
markup. Wow. It's a completely predatory practice
that extracts value before the general public
even has a fair chance to participate. And the
data provider Bubble Maps reported that Davis
managed to extract $2 million from those liquidity
pools using this exact method. $2 million. Yes.
And by October 2025, Davis and a co -founder
of a crypto exchange were named in a class action
lawsuit over it. The lawsuit alleged the meme
coin was part of a scheme utilizing weaponized
fame to disarm diligence. That phrase weaponized
fame to disarm diligence, it really captures
the core criticism of celebrity meme coins. People
buy in because they trust the famous figure,
right? Yeah, they bypass the normal financial
research they might do for, you know, a traditional
mutual fund or a stock. Right. Well, here's where
it gets really interesting, though. We have the
actual forensic data on who won and who lost,
and the numbers are staggering. They really are.
The New York Times commissioned an analysis of
the coin, and they found that while the president's
company and partners profited about 100 billion
dollars just from those automated trading fees
we talked about earlier. Right. The toll booth.
Yeah, the toll booth. On the other side. 813
,294 everyday digital wallets collectively lost
$2 billion. $2 billion. The dollar and trading
fees the creators raked in. Everyday investors
lost $20. A 20 to 1 loss ratio. That is the ultimate
aha moment for understanding how meme coins function.
For the insiders to turn their digital tokens
into real -world millions, they need someone
willing to buy those tokens from them. Those
800 ,000 regular people who probably thought
they were supporting a political movement or
getting in on a ground floor investment, they
weren't actually investors. They were acting
as what the industry calls exit liquidity. They
were literally the exit door that allowed the
whales to cash out, leaving the regular folks
holding the bag when the price collapsed. You'd
think the crypto industry, which I mean, it thrives
on volatility and risk. Yeah. You'd think they
would just shrug this off as business as usual.
But the source material shows that even the hardcore
Web 3 community turned on this project viciously.
Oh, the blowback from inside the house was massive.
Yeah. The crypto industry had spent years and
millions of dollars in lobbying, trying to build
credibility with long They desperately wanted
to be seen as a legitimate, secure alternative
financial system. And then this happens. A multi
-billion dollar Wells transfer orchestrated by
politicians that completely wrecks retail investors.
Right. Prominent Bitcoin investor Eric Voorhees
publicly called the coin stupid and embarrassing.
And Anthony Scaramucci, who is a major crypto
investor himself, he went even further. He labeled
it, itty -a -mean level corruption. That is a
strong statement. It is. Critics across the entire
ecosystem started using terms like pump and dump
and rug pull. And for you listening, if you aren't
deep in crypto jargon, a pump and dump is exactly
what it sounds like. Insiders hype up an asset
to artificially inflate its price, then sell
off their own holdings at the absolute peak.
Which causes the price to crash. Exactly. Wiping
out everyone else. And a rug pull is similar.
It's when developers just abandon a project entirely,
pull all the underlying value out of those liquidity
bowls we mentioned earlier, and just run away
with the invested funds. Yeah. And by the end
of November 2025, the Melania token had fallen
99 % from Inauguration Day. 99%. And the main
token had fallen 86%. For industry insiders,
this wasn't just a bad look. They felt it actively
destroyed the legitimacy they were fighting so
hard for. Right, because it basically confirmed
every single worst stereotype regulators already
had about the space being a haven for scammers
and grifters. Which perfectly explains why the
government response was so intense. I mean, you
can't have a multi -billion dollar transfer of
wealth, massive foreign investments bypassing
campaign laws, and nearly a million angry retail
investors stripped of their savings without Washington
getting involved. No, you can't. The legislative
reckoning was swift. And the source material
makes it clear that the outrage was distinctly
bipartisan. Yeah, the structural threat to the
system was just too large to ignore, regardless
of what party you were in. Exactly. The source
material shows Republican Senators Cynthia Loomis
and Tom Tillis explicitly expressing concern
over the VIP dinner and the precedent it set.
Right. And on the Democratic side, Senator Elizabeth
Warren described the entire venture as an orgy
of corruption. Senator Jeff Merkley went on record
calling it the Mount Everest of American corruption.
He didn't hold back. No, he actually asked the
Office of Government Ethics to investigate. And
he worked with Chuck Schumer to introduce a bill
banning senior officials. from profiting off
crypto. But the most targeted legislative response
mentioned in the sources came from Representative
Sam Liccardo. He introduced the Meme Act. The
Meme Act. Yeah. The Modern Emoluments and Malfeasance
Enforcement Act. That is quite the acronym, I
have to say. But aside from the clever name,
what did it actually do to solve that analog
law problem we were talking about? So it was
designed to outright prohibit the president.
senior White House officials and members of Congress
from issuing, promoting, or endorsing any financial
asset. Including cryptocurrencies. Including
cryptocurrencies. But the real teeth of the Meme
Act was that it introduced a private right of
action. OK, meaning what exactly? It means that
anyone who is financially harmed by purchasing
these assets, any of those 800 ,000 people acting
as exit liquidity, could directly sue the officials
involved in civil court. Oh, yeah. It takes the
power out of the hands of slow -moving, often
gridlocked congressional ethics committees, and
puts it directly into the hands of the citizens
who actually lost their money. So all of this
culminated in November 2025. Representative Jamie
Raskin, leading the Democrats on the House Judiciary
Committee, released a massive comprehensive report.
And the title alone really tells you the tone.
What was it? It was called Trump. crypto, and
a new age of corruption. Right. And that report
alleged that the cryptocurrency policies of the
administration were used directly to benefit
the president's family. It claimed that anti
-corruption and financial integrity safeguards,
the very analog laws we've been talking about
all day, were actively dismantled to build this
cryptocurrency empire. An empire which, the report
stated, was deeply entangled with foreign governments
and corporate allies. So if we connect this to
the bigger picture, what we are really looking
at is a systemic stress test of America's entire
ethics and oversight apparatus. It really is.
The laws we have on the books regarding campaign
finance, emoluments, and bribery. They were written
for the 20th century. They rely on tracking physical
bank transfers, identifying human donors, and
monitoring registered super PACs with strict
accounting ledgers. So those analog laws are
completely unequipped to handle a blockchain
token that can be minted with a few keystrokes
on a Friday, reach a $27 billion valuation by
Sunday, and then be traded anonymously by shell
companies in the British Virgin Islands by Monday.
Exactly. It exposed a massive gaping loophole
in how political influence can be bought, sold,
and completely obfuscated in the 21st century.
The technology just evolved faster than the law,
and the people who understood the technology
exploited that gap flawlessly. So taking a breath
and looking at all of this. We started with a
digital joke, right? Right. A meme coin launched
on the Solana network with literally no announcement.
Yep. We watched the mathematical mechanics of
a low float exploded into a multi -billion dollar
asset that automatically generated hundreds of
millions in hard cash through smart contract
trading fees. The toll booth. Right. We saw it
morph into an unregulated VIP lobbying tool where
foreign money bypassed campaign laws to secure
access to the commander in chief. And finally,
we saw a crash turning hundreds of thousands
of retail investors into exit liquidity, wiping
out billion dollars and triggering sweeping proposals
for legislative reform. So what does this all
mean for you, the listener? It means we have
crossed a Rubicon. The integration of decentralized
finance and political power is no longer theoretical.
It happened. It's here. And the provocative thought
I'd leave you to ponder on your own is this.
If a digital meme can instantly become a multi
-billion dollar geopolitical lobbying tool, what
happens in the next global election? Will future
world leaders even bother with traditional fundraising,
rubber chicken dinners, and highly regulated
super PACs? Or will they look at this event and
simply decide to bypass the entire regulatory
system altogether and just mint their own economy?
It really makes you wonder what the history books
are going to say about those regulatory accounting
ledgers who used to rely on. The paper trail
that was supposed to keep everything clean, transparent,
and predictable. In a world where influences
bought with an anonymous meme coin and a blockchain
hash, that old paper ledger isn't just broken.
No. It might be entirely obsolete. Thank you
so much for joining us on this deep dive into
the sources. Keep questioning the information
around you and we'll catch you next time.