GuShiio.com The day TRUMP launched was exciting, but now Tom feels a little frustrated. “I feel a lot worse than yesterday,” he said.”I definitely wouldn’t buy any MELANIA.”
Author: Joel Khalili
Compiled by: Luffy, Foresight News
In the early morning of January 18, there were two days before Donald Trump returned to the White House. Tom had just collapsed on the bed when his mobile phone lit up and received a message from an old friend: “Did you see it? Trump just launched his own cryptocurrency.”
Tom jumped up, sat down at his desk, turned on his laptop, and turned on two monitors. “It didn’t feel real,” he said.”I tried to figure out what happened.”
Tom is the head of Raydium, a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange registered in The British Virgin Islands where investors can conduct unmediated cryptocurrency transactions. Like other Raydium employees, Tom keeps his full name and whereabouts confidential for privacy and regulatory reasons.
Raydium is one of many encryption service providers that have profited heavily from the recent Memecoin boom. Exchanges like Raydium, an important part of Solana’s online trading system, have experienced rapid growth over the past year, before the advent of Trump’s Memecoin.
In 2024, driven by the Memecoin boom, Raydium handled the highest volume of trading activity ever. Tom quickly realized that Trump’s Memecoin’s arrival was an opportunity for Raydium, which would collect a small fee from each transaction.
After Tom verified that Trump Memecoin (TRUMP) was real and not an elaborate scam as some speculated, he rushed to ensure Raydium’s servers could withstand the upcoming wave of deals. (In another Memecoin trading spree at the end of 2023, the platform was paralyzed.) Tom then set out to ensure that there were enough of the new coins on Raydium for people to trade freely: he monitored the amount of Trump Memecoin people voluntarily placed out (a practice that allowed those who placed orders to earn a portion of the transaction fees), and bought them elsewhere if necessary to meet demand on the platform.
At about 5 a.m., Tom lay back into bed tiredly. In the bustle, he forgot to buy himself some TRUMP.
While Tom slept, transactions poured in. The next day, January 19,$16 billion worth of transactions occurred on Raydium, more than in all of 2023。Tom said the trading chart looks “like a hockey stick.”
Although tens of billions of dollars changed hands in the crazy trading spurred by Trump Memecoin, only a very small number of traders made profits. The vast majority of people either lose money or barely make any loss.
Value has steadily flowed to Trump affiliates that manage the cryptocurrency and to crypto service providers, including Raydium, who together made Memecoin transactions possible. As one hedge fund manager once described, other components of the Memecoin Industrial Complex include the Solana Network, companies that provide wallet software to store cryptocurrencies, liquidity providers that ensure that cryptocurrencies can be traded at any time, entities that aggregate price data, and more. They can all benefit from increased trading activity.
“If you dig deeper, you’ll see that there are a lot of working parts in the background that the public doesn’t understand,” said Anurag Arjun, co-founder of cryptocurrency infrastructure startup Avail and crypto network Polygon.
Until the end of 2023, when the Memecoin craze first appeared, Solana was still a relatively deserted place. Few people use the network, and the services built on it are barely maintained. Apart from financial speculation, there are very few applications built on Solana. “There are a lot of jokes about Solana development being as hard as chewing glass,” Tom said.”It’s really hard.”
Memecoin has previously been criticized as informal, so it may pose a threat to the encryption industry’s efforts to establish legitimacy. Trump’s Memecoin has been widely criticized as a “money-gathering move.” However, the emergence of cryptocurrencies like Trump’s Memecoin could have important indirect benefits to the broader crypto network, creating a flywheel effect in which the arrival of Memecoin investors attracts developers eager to build other applications for them. In theory, once people are equipped with Solana wallets, they are more likely to use various Solana-based applications, allowing online activity to continue to increase.
“A lot of application development teams target these new users,” Arjun said.”Memecoin is an example of what can be run on this infrastructure.”
Some experts said that the launch of Trump’s Memecoin is also of great significance to the U.S. government’s attitude towards cryptocurrencies. The industry has long complained about the lack of any clear rules in the United States governing new coin issuance; given that Trump’s Memecoin has the president’s support, its launch could be interpreted as acquiescence.
“This will form a ruling that will gradually affect all different institutions: the United States is embracing cryptocurrencies,” said Demelza Hays, digital asset portfolio manager at investment firm Zeltner Co and chief economist at cryptocurrency industry publication CoinTelegraph.”We will see more celebrity Memecoin.”
Like Trump’s launch of Memecoin, the exchange is the main profit-making, not the trader, in Solana Memecoin’s supply chain.
“Trading Trump Memecoin is like betting on roulette, and betting on Solana itself is like betting on the entire casino,” Hays,”when trading volume increases, we definitely see exchanges performing very well.”
While Raydium may benefit from the Memecoin craze and any potential flywheel effect created by the U.S. acceptance of cryptocurrencies, Tom is conflicted about Trump’s Memecoin.
“Raydium’s business is to promote transaction volume. We try to be neutral about the tokens on the platform,”he said.” The most powerful people in the world chose Solana to launch their Memecoin, and whatever the excuse, it speaks volumes about Solana’s current status.”
But Tom saidFor an industry that has long struggled to shed its bad reputation, the excitement of Trump’s Memecoin launch may not make up for the negative attention the cryptocurrency has attracted and the losses suffered by ordinary investors.。
“In my five years in the industry, I have persisted in trying to change the default belief that there is a lot of fraud and malicious behavior in the crypto space,” Tom said.”I care about that reputation very much.”
Two days after Trump began trading in Memecoin, First Lady Melania Trump launched her own Memecoin (MELANIA). Critics have expressed similar concerns that there is a conflict of interest.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment. Requests sent to emails listed on Melania’s Memecoin website also went unanswered.
The day TRUMP launched was exciting, but now Tom feels a little frustrated. “I feel a lot worse than yesterday,” he said.”I definitely wouldn’t buy any MELANIA.”
