Solana Memecoin RTR Tanks 99% Following Fake Trump Endorsement

A newly created Solana-based memecoin, RTR (Restore the Republic), dumped 99% following debunked speculations that it was tied to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. The token dropped from as high as $0.0114 to $0.007365, losing over $150 million in market cap in a few hours.

RTR’s demise came when Trump’s son, Eric Trump, called a tweet stating that the token was an official Trump coin a lie.

“This is absolutely false,” Eric replied to the now-deleted tweet on Thursday.

The token was perceived as authentic, following support from some of the big names in the crypto space. A now-deleted video from on-chain analyst SizeChad promoted the memecoin a few hours after its launch, spiking interest from lots of traders.

Following the token’s capitulation, SizeChad tweeted that he was not a part of the team, nor did he profit from the token.

“Deleted tweets. Lost $60k. Not a part of the team and never was. Received 0 tokens. Tweeted to support Ice Bags and got rugged,” he said.

Insider Wallet Earns $4M

Data from Lookonchain showed that five insider wallets made $4.17 million from RTR before the capitulation. The wallets spent 5,580 SOL ($882,000) to buy 104.64 million RTR immediately it started trading.

When the price peaked, the insider wallets sold 92.77 million RTR for 31,994 SOL ($5.05 million), cashing out $4.17 million in gains. Lookonchain’s report showed that those wallets were newly created, and their first transactions were to withdraw funds from Coinbase and Bybit, depicting a typical insider wallet.

It is unclear who owns these wallets or who is behind RTR. However, widespread rumors have it that Ice Bags, the owner of the Kanpai Pandas non-fungible token (NFT) collection, was behind the token.

Traders Lose Big

On-chain data showed that traders lost millions of dollars during the RTR token dump. One trader lost 5,687 SOL ($898,500) in just four hours of trading the token. 

The user FOMOed into the memecoin and used 5,800 SOL ($916,400) to buy 7.2 million RTR at its peak price. Four hours later, the wallet sold the acquired RTR for a mere 113.3 SOL ($18,000) and lost $898,500 to the crash. This was one of the many losses reported by late buyers of RTR, a testament that traders ought to carry out due diligence before buying a memecoin.