A recent report has found that US President Donald Trump’s official memecoin, TRUMP, had a faster listing process on crypto exchanges than the average memecoin and generated millions of dollars in gains for the platforms.
Crypto Exchanges Profit From TRUMP Memecoin
On Monday, news agency Reuters shared an analysis of market data and industry announcements related to the listing of the official TRUMP memecoin on some of the biggest crypto exchanges by market share.
In January, President Trump surprised the crypto industry after launching his official token ahead of the start of his presidency. The cryptocurrency quickly skyrocketed to its all-time high (ATH) of $75, yielding significant profits for many early investors.
However, the memecoin faced heavy backlash from the community, with several investors calling the President’s crypto venture a “big red flag.”
Notably, 80% of the cryptocurrency’s supply was held by the Trump family and their partners, raising concerns over “such a high concentration of ownership”, which can allow the team behind it to “sell large amounts of it at once, collapsing the price for retail investors,” Reuters noted.
The report claims that exchanges have been “major beneficiaries of Trump’s embrace of the industry,” as TRUMP has generated millions of dollars in revenue for the 10 largest exchanges reviewed by Reuters.
Based on standard fee estimates compiled for the analysis, the crypto platforms allegedly made more than $172 million in trading fees since the token’s listing. Additionally, the token has “favored a small group of investors,” with 45 crypto wallets making around $1.2 billion in profits over the past six months.
Nonetheless, as the token trades at 87.1% below its ATH, 712,777 wallets accumulate a collective loss of $4.3 billion, according to Bubblemaps data.
Presidential Token Saw Express Listing Process
According to the report, the largest exchanges, including Binance, Gate.io, Bitget, MEXC, OKX, Coinbase, Bybit, Upbit, Crypto.com, and HTX, listed Trump’s token “with unusual speed” compared to other recent prominent memecoins, despite the industry’s concerns.
Reuters’ analysis showed that eight of the 10 largest crypto exchanges listed TRUMP within the first 48 hours since its launch. Coinbase listed the memecoin three days later, while Upbit added the token nearly a month later, on February 13.
Meanwhile, the same 10 exchanges took significantly more to list Pepe (PEPE), Bonk (BONK), Fartcoin (FARTCOIN), and dogwifhat (WIF), the four other largest memecoins launched since 2022.
Per the report, all 10 exchanges listed PEPE and BONK, while nine listed WIF, and only seven listed FARTCOIN. For comparison, all 10 exchanges took an average of 129 days to list these tokens, but only took an average of four days to list the presidential memecoin.
Bitget, MEXC, and Coinbase reportedly said they listed the token quickly to “respond to overwhelming demand for the $TRUMP coin.” Gracy Chen, Bitget’s CEO, explained in a statement that “the crypto space was buzzing with the hype and, as any other token with a growing craze, it was imperative to add TRUMP.”
Chen told Reuters that Bitget also had concerns about the 80% supply figure but said the fact that the upcoming US president announced the coin on his social media accounts “should kind of solve the compliance issue.”
“Ultimately, user trading volume, demand … overrode the so-called risky factor here,” Bidget CEO concluded.
As of this writing, TRUMP trades at $9.43, a 2.6% decline in the daily timeframe.
