A wallet tied to US President Donald Trump’s memecoin withdrew $4.6 million from Solana decentralised exchange Meteora on Tuesday, sending the funds to crypto exchange Coinbase.

The funds, denominated in USDC ($1.00), were previously used to provide trading liquidity between the Trump token and the Circle stablecoin.

It’s the first time the wallet has withdrawn funds. The liquidity pool still contains some $206 million worth of USDC and $122 million worth of Trump’s memecoin.

After withdrawing the funds, the wallet bridged them to the Ethereum blockchain, then sent them to a Coinbase deposit address, onchain records show.

The cash out came just a day before more than $3.2 billion worth of the president’s memecoin is set to start unlocking for trading.

First tranches

When the Trump memecoin launched on January 17, its developers only released 20% of the total one billion tokens onto the market.

The remaining 80% was kept by Trump and his collaborators in reserve, and is subject to a release schedule over the following two years.

The first tranches of tokens start unlocking on April 17, exactly three months after the memecoin’s launch.

The Trump memecoin has suffered a steady decline in value in recent months.

After hitting an all-time high market value of $15 billion two days after it launched, the token has since plummeted 89%.

Even so, it’s still the 61st biggest crypto on the market with a market value of $1.6 billion.

Who profits?

On the Trump memecoin’s website, the token’s creators and a firm called CIC Digital LLC are pegged to receive the 800 million reserve tokens.

Trump wholly owns CIC Digital, according to his 2024 financial disclosure.

CIC Digital jointly owns Fight Fight Fight with another firm called Celebration Cards LLC, which is registered in Wyoming by Andrew Pierce, a corporate paralegal for Wyoming LLC Attorney.

Pierce’s firm specialises in setting up anonymous shell companies and asset protection planning, according to its website.

Bill Zanker, a Trump confidante who co-authored a book with the president in 2007, is listed as the primary contact for Fight Fight Fight in registration documents.

Although Pierce and Zanker appear to be involved with Trump’s memecoin, it’s not clear if they will receive any tokens themselves.

Pierce and Zanker did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Melania meme

To be sure, the team behind the president’s memecoin is yet to sell any of its reserve tokens.

But those behind First Lady Melania Trump’s memecoin appear to be cashing out.

Onchain records show on March 28, wallets tied to Melania meme sent $1.5 million worth of the tokens to crypto exchanges Kraken and MEXC, according to blockchain data platform Bubblemaps.

On April 7, wallets sent another $3 million of the Melania memecoin to exchanges.

Once tokens move to Kraken and MEXC they can no longer be tracked onchain, so it’s impossible to know if they were sold. But there’s few other reasons to send funds to a centralised exchange.

The Melania memecoin has shed some 31% of its market value since the first transfers to centralised exchanges.

Hayden Davis, who helped launch Melania’s memecoin, as well as one tied to Argentine President Javier Milei, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is down 1.7% over the past 24 hours to trade at $84,090.
• Ethereum fell 2.9% over the same period to $1,585.

What we’re reading

• China debates how to handle criminal crypto cache — Reuters
• Galaxy Digital, with $43bn in revenue, is twice the size of BlackRock. How? — DL News
• 90-day pause on tariffs! — Milk Road
• U.S. Treasuries Are Ailing Due to Tariffs, but Tokenized Treasuries? Growing — Unchained
• Trump crypto adviser floats tariff-funded Bitcoin reserve — DL News

Tim is a DeFi Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email at tim@dlnews.com.