Retail investors are chewing on a $4.3 billion loss from meme coins backed by U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump, as per a BeIn report.
Over a year old from the launch date, the meme coins have only rewarded a few insider traders who have managed to drain key liquidity pools, while the majority of retail investors who put money in these tokens lost their funds.
The TRUMP coin appeared for trade shortly after his inauguration and were immediately popular, but it has now lost most of its value, going from an ATH of $75 to now trading at $3.4.
Further on-chain evidence by CryptoRank shows that $2.7 billion of tokens have been locked in insider accounts, supposedly meant to be settled once Trump’s presidency ends in 2028.
While the crypto market as a whole has plummeted in value since October 2025, the decline of these presidential meme coins were not attributed to the recent downward slide but rather to structural issues which enabled a few insider traders to profit while millions of investor’s positions for the meme coins are in a loss.
Specifically, 45 wallets have large profits while 2 million investors have loss positions.