Technology

We identified 24 wallets that bought $MELANIA in the minutes before the existence of the coin and its backing from the first lady was publicised (via Melania’s Truth Social account, naturally). These people — who knew where to get the coins and were apparently confident it was not one of the hundreds of unofficial Trump family coins — bought $2.6mn of the tokens and flipped them within days for about $100mn. As many FT readers clocked, this is not exactly how a normal float should work. Memecoins are an arena with all the accoutrements and vocabulary of finance but lacking even the level of regulation that governs the sale of Beanie Babies.