The cryptocurrency $MELANIA, introduced earlier this year by U.S. First Lady Melania Trump, is now at the center of a legal battle after investors accused its creators of engineering a scheme that led to the token’s rapid collapse in value.
According to court documents filed on Tuesday, October 21, in the Southern District of New York, executives at the Meteora cryptocurrency exchange are alleged to have structured the launch to benefit themselves and their associates. The filing claims they purchased large quantities of $MELANIA, drove up the price artificially, and then sold the tokens at inflated rates before the value plummeted.
Launched on January 19, one day before Donald Trump’s inauguration, $MELANIA was initially priced at just a few cents per token. Its value surged to $13.73 within hours but later crashed to about $0.10, wiping out more than 99% of its peak value.
Investors argue this sharp decline was not coincidental but the result of a deliberate “pump-and-dump” scheme by Meteora, which allegedly leveraged Melania Trump’s name to give the cryptocurrency an air of legitimacy.
The accusations have been added to a broader lawsuit initiated in April involving multiple cryptocurrencies associated with the same platform.
In their statement, the plaintiffs clarified that they do not hold Melania Trump personally liable but accuse Meteora and its partners of using her and other prominent figures as “window dressing” to promote fraudulent operations.
Meteora has yet to issue a response to media inquiries, AFP reported.
A recent Financial Times investigation revealed that the Trump family collectively earned over $1 billion in pre-tax profits from various cryptocurrency ventures over the past year. In addition to $MELANIA, former President Donald Trump launched his own coin, $TRUMP, on the same day, while his sons’ company, World Liberty Financial, began selling WLFI, valued at $550 million in total.
