Messari founder Ryan Selkis has urged soon-to-be President Donald Trump to dismiss the team behind the release of the MELANIA meme coin.
According to him, the launch was poorly executed, undermined Trump’s financial interests, and damaged some of the public goodwill he has enjoyed since winning the U.S. presidential polls in November 2024.
Market Collision Between Two Meme Coins
In a January 19 post on X, Selkis admonished the people who had greenlighted the MELANIA project, saying they did not know what they were doing and did not have the President-elect’s best interest in mind.
This was after the meme coin’s debut drove down the value of another Trump-affiliated token known as Official Trump (TRUMP) by nearly 50% and wiped out billions of dollars.
Introduced to the public on Friday, TRUMP’s market value hit a high of $15 billion nearly two days later, surpassing meme heavyweights such as Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Pepe (PEPE) and even threatening to break into the top ten largest cryptocurrencies by market cap. However, MELANIA stole some of that thunder following its unveiling, with the TRUMP token dropping from a high of $75 per data from CoinMarketCap to about $38.
The First Lady’s coin jumped a fully diluted valuation of $9.99 billion, while the President’s retains a market cap of $10.74 billion, ranking #21 among cryptocurrencies.
It is this turn of events that has so irked Selkis, with the Trump supporter insinuating that the poorly timed launch of the second token cannibalized the first coin’s value and painted the initiative as opportunistic. Nevertheless, he refrained from directly blaming the President for the debacle, noting that he is focused on other pressing issues such as his inauguration.
He, however, voiced frustration over what he believes is a lack of crypto-native expertise within Trump’s advisory circle, suggesting he would be willing to help the new administration avoid similar mistakes in the future.
Critic Claims Launch Due to “Greed”
Some commentators, like Delphi Labs founding partner José Maria Macedo, have speculated that the decision to launch MELANIA could have been driven by greed. Macedo put forward that insiders who missed out on the gains made from the initial launch may have sought to capitalize with the second meme coin.
While this is largely an unproven theory, MELANIA’s unusual economic model could give it some credence: It includes a 35% team allocation with a lock-up period of just 30 days, far shorter than TRUMP’s three-year vesting period.
Data from crypto trading platform GMNG also revealed that a top profitable address spent $800,000 on MELANIA tokens before flipping them for $38.6 million shortly after launch. This rapid profit-taking could further fuel skepticism about the project’s integrity, even raising concerns about insider trading.
