As Melania Trump steps into her new role, she’s making her impact in the cryptocurrency world with the launch of her self-branded memecoin, MELANIA. This comes just as her husband’s memecoin, TRUMP, took a 38% nosedive in value. President-elect Donald Trump’s TRUMP token previously hit a peak valuation of $15 billion before the drop.
In less than two hours since its launch on January 19th, MELANIA escalated in value to $6 billion. At the time of the launch, shared by both Melania and her husband via social media, over 45,000 wallets had already purchased the memecoin. Consequently, TRUMP, Donald Trump’s memecoin counterpart, faced a significant decrease of $5 billion in market cap.
The MELANIA memecoin is being marketed as an opportunity for supporters to show their engagement, as a document from the token’s website states. It emphasized that the token is not meant to be an investment opportunity. Further, it reported that the tokens would be distributed with 35% going to the token’s team, 20% designated for both the treasury and community, 15% public offering, and 10% reserved for liquidity.
Despite these statements, social media comments on the distribution of tokens suggest a different story. Blockchain analytics platform Bubblemaps posted that nearly 90% of the token supply was held in one wallet, conflicting with the official claim of token distribution.
Coinbase executive Conor Grogan posited that MELANIA may have been set up in haste by a less experienced team, as compared to the team behind TRUMP memecoin. In contrast, an anonymous cryptocurrency developer suggested that the website for the MELANIA token, created just a day before its launch, lacks protective measures and carries a less developed front end code.
According to public records, the domain supporting the launch of MELANIA is owned by MKT World LLC, a company established by Melania Trump in 2021. This new venture in the world of cryptocurrency has started making waves just ahead of Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration on January 20th.