Nearly 990,000 people lost a combined $3.8 billion on a digital coin called $TRUMP by the end of June 2026, according to analysis by a blockchain research firm called Nansen. The finding was first reported by The New York Times on July 4, 2026.

The coin crashed hard. About two out of every three people who bought it lost money. The price fell from a peak of $75.35 per coin down to $1.69 — a drop of 98%.

Donald Trump announced the coin in January 2025, just three days before his inauguration. It hit a market value of over $9 billion within hours. But the pattern that followed was straightforward: people who got in early made huge profits. People who bought later lost money.

Who Made Money, and Who Didn't

At least fifty of the largest coin holders each made more than $10 million, according to blockchain research firm Chainalysis. The coin generated nearly $100 million in trading fees in the first days of trading alone. In those first two days, one investor lost as much as $5 million, Bloomberg News reported.

Trump himself did far better than ordinary investors. Financial records show he personally made $636 million from the coin. The Wall Street Journal reported on July 1, 2026, that Trump made around $1 billion from his memecoins and his family's other crypto project, World Liberty Financial, combined. A Reuters investigation from June 2026 found that the Trump family's total crypto profits reached at least $2.3 billion since he took office.

Ordinary investors' losses built up over time. By late April 2026, Reuters estimated total losses at $2.3 billion. By the end of June, that number had grown to $3.8 billion. Some losses came after Trump hosted a private dinner for crypto investors in May 2025 — an event you had to own at least 10,000 coins to attend.

Why This Happened

Cryptocurrency coins like this one are not built to keep value. They produce no earnings, they have no real function, and the people running them don't have to tell you what they're planning to do. What made $TRUMP different wasn't the way it worked — coins like this typically spike fast and crash over time — but the fact that it had Trump's name attached, which drew in millions of ordinary people who might not have bought otherwise.

One thing that makes this case clear is blockchain technology itself. Unlike old-fashioned stock scams, every transaction on a blockchain is permanently recorded and visible to anyone. Researchers could see exactly who bought when and at what price. They can't always tell you why people bought or whether they understood the risk, but they can tell you precisely who lost money.

There is something important to understand here about how this system worked. This wasn't just a simple story of winners and losers. The people who got in first — and especially those who had inside information — had built-in advantages from the very beginning. Ordinary people who bought later had no way to compete. That unfairness is written into the blockchain records themselves. Whether the rules about stocks and commodities actually prevent this kind of behavior in crypto is still an unsettled legal question.

Today, the $TRUMP coin has become the main example used in arguments about whether crypto markets need stronger rules. The hard numbers from Nansen — nearly 990,000 people who lost money, $3.8 billion in losses, a 98% price collapse — give lawmakers and regulators actual facts to work from instead of just hearing stories.