A $10,000 investment in President Donald Trump’s official meme coin on the day he returned to the White House would now be worth just $364, according to a Newsweek analysis of market data—a loss of more than 96 percent.
A Newsweek analysis of CoinMarketCap data found that a $10,000 investment in the Official Trump ($TRUMP) token on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2025, would be worth about $364 as of July 1, 2026.
While the coin experienced several sharp upticks during 2025, it never came close to recovering its launch-day value and continued a broader downward trend through the first half of 2026.
Newsweek reached out to the White House via email for comment.
Trump Organization-affiliated entities hold 80 percent of the $TRUMP cryptocurrency token, which launched in January 2025 and is currently valued at more than $3 billion.
For investors, the losses were substantially larger than those experienced by people who bought Bitcoin on the day Trump returned to the White House.
A $10,000 investment in Bitcoin on Inauguration Day would therefore be worth about $5,793, representing a decline of roughly 42 percent.
The gap between the two investments widened considerably over time. While Bitcoin spent much of 2025 trading above its Inauguration Day level, the $TRUMP token lost most of its value within weeks of Trump’s return to office and never mounted a sustained recovery.
A broader comparison with traditional markets also produced a starkly different result. A hypothetical $10,000 investment tracking the S&P 500 on the first trading day after Inauguration Day would have grown to roughly $12,298 by July 1, 2026. That means an investor who put $10,000 into the S&P 500 would now have nearly 34 times as much money as someone who invested the same amount in the $TRUMP token.
Robert R. Johnson, a professor of finance at Creighton University’s Heider College of Business, said the losses are not unusual in the world of meme coins.
“No one invests in meme coins; they can only speculate,” Johnson told Newsweek. “One cannot invest in meme coins, Trump or otherwise, because you cannot use the fundamental financial tools to value crypto as it doesn’t produce anything.”
Johnson said the rise and fall of many meme coins is often explained by what economists call the “Greater Fool Theory”—the idea that buyers believe they will be able to sell an asset to someone else at a higher price regardless of its underlying value.
“The greater fool theory is an investment concept stating that you can make money on overvalued assets—regardless of their intrinsic value—by selling them to someone else at an even higher price,” he said. “This dynamic fuels speculative bubbles, which collapse when there are no more buyers left to perpetuate the cycle.”
Johnson also argued that Trump’s involvement may have encouraged some investors to view the token as more credible than other meme coins.
“The unfortunate aspect of the Trump meme coin debacle is that Trump lending his name to the coin, in many people’s eyes, gave it credibility,” he said.
The losses for investors stand in stark contrast to the earnings reported by businesses connected to the president. Trump has advanced a pro-crypto policy agenda during his second term.
Much of that was linked to World Liberty Financial and businesses connected to the $TRUMP token. The disclosure underscored how central digital assets have become to Trump’s business interests, representing one of the largest sources of reported income in the filing and eclipsing many of the revenue streams more traditionally associated with the Trump brand.
The White House has dismissed concerns about conflicts of interest. Deputy press secretary Anna Kelly told Newsweek that “neither the president nor his family has ever engaged—or will ever engage—in conflicts of interest.”
The performance of a meme coin does not necessarily determine how much money its creators make. Crypto projects can generate revenue through initial token sales, reserved insider allocations, licensing arrangements, trading activity and other business structures long before later investors realize gains or losses.
In other words, a token can plunge in value while the businesses behind it continue generating revenue. Investor returns and creator revenues are often entirely separate measures.
As a result, a token’s market price can collapse while businesses involved in launching or promoting it still generate substantial income. That distinction is particularly important in the case of meme coins, which often derive much of their value from public attention, branding and speculation rather than an underlying business or revenue-producing asset.
As a result, investor returns and creator revenues can move in very different directions.
While cryptocurrency has become one of the most lucrative parts of Trump’s business empire, many retail investors who bought into the president’s meme coin shortly after launch have seen almost all of their investment erased.
