WASHINGTON, July 4 -- When Donald Trump launched his TRUMP meme coin three days before his inauguration in January 2025, the retail buyers who rushed in to ride the presidential moment faced risks the president himself did not. Blockchain analytics firm Nansen tracked what happened next: nearly one million individual wallets held TRUMP tokens, and through the end of June 2026, those holders carried a combined $3.81 billion in losses. Trump, who structured his financial interest as a royalty rather than a direct coin holding, collected more than $635 million in fees from the same asset.

The asymmetry is not incidental. It is structural. Trump holds his interest in TRUMP through a licensing deal with Fight Fight Fight LLC, a Trump-affiliat...