The crypto world was recently taken by storm with the launch of a new token on the Solana (SOL) network, named Restore the Republic (RTR), rumored to be linked to Donald Trump.
The rumors surged after his son, Eric Trump, posted about his newfound interest in crypto and decentralized finance (DeFi), hinting at a "big announcement" upcoming. Two days later, the RTR token launched.
Initially, the token's launch appeared to be a massive success, reaching a market capitalization of $155 million within hours of its release. However, Eric Trump soon issued a cautionary statement about "fake tokens" and clarified that no official Trump crypto project had been announced, causing RTR to drop by 95%.
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Further investigation revealed that Kanpai Labs, the company behind the Kanpai Pandas non-fungible token (NFT) collection, may have played a role in the token's promotion, as it reportedly boosted the token's visibility through Google advertisements before its launch.
The CEO of Kanpai Labs, known as Bagz, said in an X post that was deleted shortly after:
<The Trump family> picked the launch date and time. Then hard rugged us 5 minutes after we were told they were tweeting. It was one of the hottest launches ever prior to that. I am so sorry to everyone.
Blockchain analytics service Lookonchain reported that insiders managed to make significant profits during the token's rise and fall. Five crypto wallets were identified as having purchased nearly 105 million RTR tokens with $882,000 worth of SOL and then selling 93 million of those tokens for $5 million in SOL, resulting in over $4 million in profits.
The controversy surrounding the RTR token serves as a reminder of the volatility and speculative nature of the memecoin market.
Meanwhile, the aforementioned Trump's "big announcement" was actually a DeFi platform aimed at addressing banking inequality.
