Three days before his presidential inauguration, Donald Trump launched a meme coin, a type of cryptocurrency whose value is buoyed by social media and internet culture, rather than any sort of functionality or intrinsic value.

The coin – officially called $Trump – briefly ascended into the top 15 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization and attracted over a half-million buyers.

Referencing the coin in a news conference on Jan. 21, 2025, a reporter asked Trump if he intended to continue selling products that benefited him personally while being president.

“You made a lot of money [on $Trump], sir,” he told Trump, who seemed oblivious to its meteoric rise in value.

“How much?” Trump asked.

“Several billion dollars, it seems like, in the last couple days.”

Over the following week, various publications claimed the meme coin had “ballooned [Trump’s] net worth” making him a “crypto billionaire.”

While it’s true that Trump stands to benefit handsomely from the meme coin and his other crypto ventures, the claims of Trump himself earning billions off it are overblown.

Funny money or filch?

Meme coins became popular in 2013 with the launch of Dogecoin, which its creators intended as a joke, spoofing the many other seemingly useless cryptocurrencies that were popping up at the time. It was never supposed to be a popular investment. The creators even attempted to make it as undesirable as possible to ensure it wouldn’t.

Twelve years later, it remains in the top 10 cryptocurrencies and has inspired thousands of other meme coins to launch.

In 2025, it’s cheaper and easier than ever to launch and trade these tokens.

For example, all it takes to create a new coin on the website Pump.fun is a name, ticker symbol, description, image and the equivalent of roughly US$5 worth of cryptocurrency.

Moonshot, the crypto exchange that Trump’s meme coin website routes interested buyers to, allows users to sign up in as little as 10 minutes. They’re then able to purchase the Trump coin and a slew of other meme coins.

The vast majority of meme coins launched are dubious. Many are outright scams. For instance, in August 2024 the Instagram account of McDonald’s was hacked to advertise a meme coin named $Grimace in a nod to the fast-food chain’s purple mascot. After artificially inflating the price of the coin, the creators cashed out close to $700,000.

There are countless other scam coins that fly under the radar using the same dynamic: generate hype, pump the price and dump on investors.

Looking under the hood

So how much might Trump and his associates actually benefit from his new meme coin and, more broadly, the “free-for-all” attitude his administration is taking toward the crypto industry?

I study the gray area between participation and exploitation in crypto markets, and I dug deeper into the Trump meme coin.

One way to assess whether a meme coin offering is a scam is to look at its “tokenomics” – that is, the predetermined number of units of its supply, how that supply is distributed and how much of it the creator gets to keep. The higher the percentage of the supply allocated to the creators, the more they can sell for profit. As media studies scholar Lana Swartz points out, creator tokens were originally intended for developers to crowdfund their startups. But with meme coins – which typically don’t claim to build anything – they exist to enrich their creators and, potentially, fund continued marketing of the coin.

Unlike Dogecoin, which took a “fair launch” approach – meaning that its creators didn’t allocate a portion of the initial coins to themselves before allowing others to trade it – the majority of Trump tokens are allocated to its creators on a three-year-long distribution schedule.

In fact, 80% of the coin supply will be distributed to the coin’s creators over the course of three years. In other words, the tokenomics of the Trump meme coin are set up so that its creators can slowly sell off their large supply without drastically manipulating its price. Rather than quickly pulling the rug from under investors’ feet, they can do it slowly.

None of this is hidden information – the tokenomics of the Trump meme coin are featured prominently on the coin’s website.

Notably, none of the people behind the coin will begin receiving portions of the supply until March 2025. The amount of profit they can reap will be based on future prices. At the time of this writing, the Trump meme coin was down roughly 60% from its peak.

Who are these creators anyway? The various layers of limited liability companies behind the project, listed in fine print on the $Trump meme website, obscure which individuals stand to benefit.

Presuming Trump is one of these creators, the president technically doesn’t have an allotment of the supply to cash out – not until March, at least.

So, no, Trump didn’t make billions from the coin. But he still stands to potentially vacuum up millions of dollars from unwitting investors. Judging by the spike in crypto exchange downloads over the weekend of the Trump coin’s launch, it attracted many new, and likely novice, speculators. Coins like this, which can significantly devalue in a matter of hours, can be distressing introductions to the world of investing.

This isn’t the first time Trump has tried to make a killing on crypto, either. He’s already brought in millions off the sales of five nonfungible token launches – which are essentially digital trading cards – since 2022.

Have fun!

The final words in Trump’s meme coin announcement on his social media platform Truth Social sum up his administration’s attitude toward the crypto industry over the next four years: “Have fun!”

On Jan. 23, Trump signed an executive order containing a slew of decrees aimed at making the U.S. the “crypto capital of the world.”

He has tapped venture capitalist David Sacks to chair the group tasked with reworking the prohibitive regulations around the crypto industry. Sacks has invested in crypto-focused companies and has bragged about his personal crypto investments on his podcast.

In a recent Fox Business interview, Sacks was asked if he thought Trump’s meme coin was a conflict of interest. He said no, suggesting that the coins should be thought of as “collectibles” akin to “a baseball card or a stamp.”

Notably, the $Trump website also refers to the tokens as “cards” and “memes,” rather than coins. This could be an attempt to skirt legal trouble: It frames them as tokens of mere amusement rather than serious investment vehicles with expectations of profit.

Nonetheless, several members of Congress have already called for a probe into the Trump meme coin.

No matter how you define $Trump, one thing remains clear: The structure of the coin is set up to siphon money out of retail investors for at least the next three years. Sure, ordinary speculators can still profit off it, so long as its value remains propped up. That’s basically a gamble.

With Trump starting to accumulate a stockpile of various cryptocurrencies through his other venture, World Liberty Financial, he could also benefit immensely from a looser regulatory environment.

Fun indeed.

Maximilian Brichta does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.