>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.

Unpicking the first lady’s memecoin launch