X user @kimchi1x is back in the crypto conversation after a fresh wave of posts claimed he made $40 million from $TRUMP.
The attention is unusual for a trader who, according to the source text, has almost never posted about meme coin trading itself. Kimchi’s X account has close to 80,000 followers, but his feed is described as almost entirely luxury lifestyle content: food, sports cars, watches, short videos, and photo drops showing life after a sudden rise in wealth. Those posts had been appearing since February of last year. What changed this time was scale. A new post tied to the Trump coin story reportedly reached 25.6 million impressions, versus roughly 500,000 for earlier posts.
Questions over the $40 million figure
The source text says many traders who became famous from $TRUMP gains had either visible on-chain histories or were already known meme coin players, which made their stories easier for the market to accept. Kimchi’s case is different. The reported $40 million profit has not been backed by on-chain data in the material provided.
That gap has fueled doubt on X. The source text cites @sukie234 as saying some of kimchi’s wealth-flexing images may have been generated or altered with AI. Other users argued that some of the luxury items shown in his posts may have been borrowed.
An Orangie interview offered a closer look
A face-to-face interview by well-known meme trader Orangie, recorded before Trump launched the coin, gave the market more detail on kimchi’s background. According to the source text, kimchi only started trading meme coins in early April 2024, but he ramped up quickly. By November 2024, he had already reached at least six figures in monthly profit.
The interview reportedly showed a Solana wallet on his screen with a balance of $150,000. Kimchi also said he spent 15 hours a day scanning the chain for new opportunities.
The interview included personal details as well. The source text says kimchi was studying business at the University of Southern California at the time, largely because his parents wanted him to. Orangie also used a Discord video call to share the in-person meeting with members of a small group chat, described in the source material as a circle of traders who recognized one another through on-chain results and reputation.
Why he moved away from long holding
The source text recounts a conversation that took place in kimchi’s Porsche 911. Orangie asked whether he believed in holding for the long term. Kimchi said he did, but added that he had developed PTSD around the idea of long holding.
Orangie first thought that came from getting trapped in positions during 2021. Kimchi’s answer was different: he said he had taken large positions near the highs in $POPCAT and other large-cap meme coins, suffered heavy losses, and stopped trusting long-term holds. From there, he shifted toward being what the source text calls a “paper hand.”
After starting meme coin trading in April 2024, kimchi initially believed the cycle might end with that summer. Later, his view changed, and he came to think meme coins might never have a clean or final ending.
The timing around January 2025
The source text highlights one date in particular: Orangie interviewed kimchi on Jan. 14, 2025. In that interview, kimchi said he would stop once he had made eight figures in U.S. dollars. A few days later, Trump coin appeared. The author of the source piece links those events and argues that kimchi then hit his target and moved into the wealth-display phase that now defines his public image.
Even so, the material provided does not supply final on-chain proof for the full $40 million number. It presents the source author’s own view that the claim is at least plausible and not something they are inclined to dismiss.
A case study from the meme coin boom
The source text places kimchi inside a larger shift in trading culture. It says pump.fun changed meme coin trading by driving issuance costs down and making token launches and transactions far easier. In that setup, attention could be monetized much faster than in the older meme coin model, which leaned more heavily on slower community building and longer cycles.
It also argues that X is full of young traders who operate in a similar way: sitting at their screens for long stretches, watching on-chain activity at high intensity, and trying to click into new trades before everyone else. Kimchi is presented as one of those traders.
According to the source text, he first got into meme coins after a friend from Fortnite told him that trading them could generate solid daily income. From that starting point, the article argues that the 2024–2025 meme coin surge may have been the most successful episode of mass adoption in crypto since NFTs.
Liquidity, exits, and narrative fatigue
The source piece also says Trump pulled a huge amount of liquidity out of crypto through Trump coin. It then argues that young traders who got rich through that wave, especially those who never had strong conviction in crypto before meme coins or lost it through the speed of the meme market, may not recycle much of that wealth back into the sector.
The article frames them as young, but already shaped by the market’s brutality and fully aware of the kind of game they are playing.
On whether meme coins can return to their earlier peak, the source text does not give a firm answer. It does, however, point to one recent example: traders have noted that Jimothy, a meme image that spread globally and was posted by the White House X account, only just pushed past a $50 million market capitalization. The source author reads that as a sign of narrative fatigue in pure attention-driven meme coins. A topic or image that goes viral on TikTok or another social platform, in that reading, no longer has the same easy path to valuations in the hundreds of millions or even tens of billions of dollars.
Still, the source piece stops short of calling an end to the meme coin story. Its closing argument is that speculation remains alive across markets, from sports betting to sneakers, streetwear, Pokémon cards, and in-game skins. Most participants may wash out. Some will not. Kimchi is presented as one of the people who made it to the top during this cycle.