Is TRUMP being soft-rugged? On-chain data points to a $94mln exit
But what’s the endgame behind this silent liquidation?
Over the last three weeks, the team behind the “official” TRUMP memecoin, launched just days before Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration, has quietly removed about $94 million in USDC from its liquidity pools.
On-chain data from analyst EmberCN showed that the team sent this money straight to Coinbase, indicating something far more serious than simple profit-taking.
Instead of performing a typical “hard rug pull,” where developers drain all liquidity at once and disappear, the TRUMP team used a slower, more calculated soft-unwinding method to withdraw funds without attracting attention.
TRUMP developers quietly drain
On-chain data further confirmed that the team relied on the Meteora DLMM (Dynamic Liquidity Market Maker) on Solana [SOL] to execute this strategy.
In this process, they added only TRUMP tokens, without pairing them with USDC, to specific price levels.
Now, when the market price reaches those levels, the Meteora system automatically swaps the TRUMP tokens for USDC.
This approach lets the team sell their tokens quietly without causing a dramatic crash on the chart, while allowing them to steadily collect USDC in the background as retail buyers continue trying to support the price.
A $94 million flight to centralized exchanges
Needless to say, the scale of this liquidation is staggering.
Even as the token has lost over 90% of its value since its January 2025 peak, the team has only accelerated its withdrawals.
On the 31st of December alone, a wallet controlled by the core team removed $33 million in USDC from the pools and sent the funds directly to Coinbase.
The “Melania” blueprint
The activity in Official Trump [TRUMP] follows a repeated playbook.
Investigators note that the MELANIA token, launched shortly after the TRUMP memecoin, used the exact same single-sided liquidity method on Meteora to liquidate positions.
With the token down sharply from its all-time high of around $74, the team’s steady removal of liquidity signals a final “winding down” phase for a project many now describe as “dead.”
The massive liquidity drain from the TRUMP memecoin arrives at a symbolic moment for the “Trump crypto ecosystem.”
TRUMP price action and more
As of 31st December, the token struggled to find a floor.
It was trading at $4.94, after a tiny 0.31% gain that does nothing to hide its 90% collapse from its post-inauguration peak.
This memecoin “sunset” sharply contrasted with the institutional ambitions of World Liberty Financial [WLFI], the project officially backed by the President.
Even WLFI has not escaped market volatility; it ends 2025 down 56% from its launch high.
All this has left everyone wondering whether a sitting president should maintain ties to a private crypto venture or not.
Final Thoughts
- The identical strategy used in the MELANIA token suggests a coordinated playbook, implying that multiple Trump-branded tokens may have been designed as short-term cash engines.
- A 90% price collapse for TRUMP, and its struggle to find a floor, signals a near-complete erosion of market confidence.
