Rumors that Donald Trump was about to launch a new token on the Robinhood chain swept through crypto markets over the weekend, sending the TRUMP token above $3.4, its highest level since March, and pushing Robinhood shares higher, with HOOD at one point up more than 11%.
As the speculation spread across X, Telegram groups and other crypto communities, wallets identified in the report as belonging to the official TRUMP team sold into the move. The combined proceeds from the reported sales exceeded $12 million. The episode began to unwind only after Eric Trump publicly denied that any such token launch was planned.
Odaily Planet Daily traced the start of the frenzy to Aug. 21.
The rumor cycle began with “inside information”
Before the token-launch chatter took over, Trump had made fresh pro-crypto remarks at a White House cryptocurrency meeting, repeating his support for crypto innovation and a friendlier regulatory setting. The report said those comments, together with actions such as U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent’s bond buyback moves, helped lift risk assets. BTC briefly moved above $79,000, while gold rebounded to around $4,600. Some participants described the move as another round of a “Trump-style bull market.”
Market figures including F2Pool co-founder Wang Chun and the CEO of Strive were cited as saying the bear market was over. After that rally, side-channel claims involving Trump started to spread. The most widely circulated version said Trump planned to issue another token on the Robinhood chain at 2 a.m. on Aug. 22.
By the evening of Aug. 21, that claim had spread broadly across X, crypto communities and WeChat groups. Once the supposed scoop became public enough to function as an open secret, the direction of the trade became clear.
The claim changed repeatedly, from Trump himself to his family members
Later that night, a screenshot of a Telegram message began circulating in major crypto groups. In that version, the message no longer said Trump himself would launch a token. It said one of Trump’s sons would do so, but not that day.
That shift still carried weight because traders remembered the previous TRUMP launch. The report pointed back to Jan. 18 of last year, three days before Trump was due to formally take office as U.S. president, when the “official Trump meme coin” TRUMP surged from around $0.5 to nearly $40 within a day, then approached $80 over the following three days. According to the report, a number of KOLs and on-chain whales made millions, and in some cases tens of millions of dollars, during that run.
With that backdrop, many traders did not want to miss what they believed could be another windfall, even if they also knew the result could resemble money-losing projects such as MELANIA or LIBRA. By that evening, people were already watching on-chain activity closely in case a new Trump-linked token suddenly appeared.
On-chain chatter moved to the center, with WWW, Truth Coin and Test Coin mentioned
By Aug. 22, after a night in which no token launch materialized, the focus shifted from timing rumors to wallet activity.
Several community members posted that a newly created wallet on the Robinhood chain had received 290 ETH and might be tied to a token-launch test by the Trump family. They said the token ticker was WWW. One version of the claim added that the first build of the token carried a 10% trading tax, later cut to 0.3%; that the market capitalization at the time was about $10 million; that the developer controlled about 99.9% of supply; and that the token name was Truth Coin.
Others said a separate token called Test Coin showed similar characteristics and had a total supply of 1 billion tokens.
That narrative later began to break down. Multiple community members and KOLs said the address in question was linked to a repeat scammer known for launching rug-pull tokens. Crypto Jargon also published a detailed review of the address and fund flows. With that, another piece of the launch story was gradually discredited.
X posts kept the theme alive as larger accounts joined in
Even as the on-chain claims weakened, discussion around an imminent Trump-family token kept spreading on X through Aug. 22. A growing number of accounts posted versions of the story, whether for traffic, claimed market intel or plain FOMO-driven amplification.
Among the accounts cited in the report, crypto marketing account doomer wrote that “according to insiders at WLFI, the Trump family plans to launch tokens such as BARRON and DONJR in October.” Ronald Carter, described as having close to 200,000 followers, wrote that Trump would launch a new token in about one month. Whale Scan, said to have more than 280,000 followers, posted shortly after 2 a.m. on Aug. 23 that Trump was about to launch a new token and that it was the first to call the news, adding a prompt to turn on notifications.
As phrases such as “I WILL BE THE FIEST TO CALL IT” circulated from account to account, more participants joined in. During that period of peak attention, the TRUMP team was already selling.
TRUMP spiked, then team-linked wallets sold into the rally
Price action in the report was straightforward. On Aug. 20, after Trump’s remarks and a set of policy-related positives, TRUMP rose more than 26% in a single day and reached a high of $1.865.
Two days later, on Aug. 22, the token briefly moved above $3.4, the highest since March 21, with a nearly 100% gain over 24 hours.
On-chain data cited in the report showed that on Aug. 23, a TRUMP team address, 2RH...FSK, transferred out 3.837 million SOL worth $9.33 million. The funds then moved through BitGo and into OKX.
On Aug. 24, another TRUMP team address, BDNB...mx66, sold 1.1 million TRUMP in the early hours of the day by adding one-sided liquidity. The wallet received 2.94 million USDC, implying an average sale price of $2.68.
Using the figures in the report, the team’s proceeds from sales tied to the rumor-fueled rally exceeded $12 million.
Eric Trump rejected the claim and called it a scam
The decisive response came on Aug. 23. Not long after Whale Scan’s post, Eric Trump saw the claim that the Trump family was preparing to launch a token and replied publicly: “This is a joke… it’s absolutely not true. No one is issuing any type of token. If anyone implies otherwise, it’s a scam.”
That post undercut the core rumor directly and brought the speculative launch narrative to a halt.
After the denial, debate shifted to what might actually be planned
Eric Trump’s statement did not end all discussion. Several crypto KOLs continued to argue over what, if anything, could still be coming.
Crypto Wuwei said the “president launching a new token” episode appeared to be a fraudulent event planned by an active market maker, with momentum amplified by coordinated groups before spreading through on-chain user circles.
Bei Jiang Blockchain argued that Trump would not issue a token because of the CLARITY Act. According to that post, the bill requires Trump to divest crypto business interests, Trump has already agreed to that provision, and the Senate is set to vote on the bill in September.
Another KOL, Guobao, made a different distinction. He said Trump himself had not launched a token, but that Trump Media or World Liberty Financial had officially confirmed plans to issue “a new, freely tradable Trump meme coin.” He also argued that market discussion had mixed together several different matters that do not have the same structure.
In that explanation, Trump Media had previously announced a digital token plan for DJT shareholders. With Feb. 2, 2026 set as the record date, eligible shareholders would in principle receive one token for each full share of DJT they hold. The published terms state that the token does not represent equity in Trump Media or any other entity, is not a tokenized version of DJT stock, and cannot be transferred or redeemed for cash. Its possible use cases include benefits or discounts tied to products such as Truth Social, Truth+ and Truth Predict.
For now, the report said there is still no clear answer on whether a new Trump-family-related token could appear within the next month or in October, whose name it would use, when any Trump Media token might go live, or whether such a product would have any connection to the Robinhood chain.