TRUMP meme coin brings $172m to crypto exchanges despite centralisation risks

TRUMP, a meme coin linked to former US President Donald Trump’s inner circle, has generated at least $172 million in fees for centralized exchanges in the six months since its launch, according to Reuters. The coin, launched as a symbol of support for Trump, has been a source of sharp profits – despite signs of centralized ownership and potential risks for investors.

Just 10 major exchanges, including Binance, Coinbase, OKX, Bybit, Bitget and others, added TRUMP to trading on average just four days after launch. In comparison, listing other meme coins such as PEPE, BONK and WIF took them an average of 129 days. Coinbase made the decision in one day, saying it views TRUMP as a high-risk “experimental token.”

Despite the fact that 80% of the token supply was initially assigned to the Trump family and associates, many platforms ignored this factor. Bitget CEO Gracie Chen admitted that token concentration was “very risky,” but the exchange made concessions due to “high demand from users.”

Meanwhile, only 45 wallets made $1.2 billion in profits from TRUMP trading, while the remaining 712,000 addresses collectively lost more than $4.3 billion. This confirms the nature of meme coins as instruments prone to pampers, manipulation and high volatility, as previously pointed out by New York regulators.

Specifically, Coinbase restricted access to the token to users from New York, citing a warning from the state’s Department of Financial Services published the day before the launch. It categorized meme coins as “sentiment-based virtual assets” and highlighted the risks associated with “dump-and-dump” and money laundering.

Earlier, the Financial Times estimated that in the first three months after launch, the TRUMP team earned at least $314 million from token sales and another $36 million from commissions on the Solana network. These figures, combined with data on exchange revenues, illustrate the scale of interest and commercial benefit, despite the controversial tokenomics and structural risks.