Trump's 'legal scam' cost 1 million people nearly $4 billion: report

Almost 1 million people lost more than $3.8 billion investing in President Donald Trump's memecoin, the New York Times reported Saturday.

Those are the numbers from the cryptocurrency analytics firm Nansen, which just issued its report on Trump memecoin losses through the end of June, according to the report.

"The odds were always in his favor," wrote Times reporters Eric Lipton and David Yaffe-Bellany. "Trump profited whether the price of his memecoin went up or down."

That's because the president made money whenever $TRUMP memecoin tokens were traded, the report explained.

Trump has made $2.2 billion from his businesses since returning to the White House in 2025, the Times noted. He unveiled $TRUMP memecoin three days before his inauguration.

According to Nansen, 988,905 buyers of the $TRUMP memecoin lost a total of $3.81 billion. The coin's value dipped 97 percent from its highest price, dropping from $75.35 to just $1.76 as of Friday, the Times reported.

Lipton and Yaffe-Bellany spoke with crypto trader Nicholas Pinto who told the Times he was among those to lose money on the $Trump coin. He estimated his losses at roughly $500,000.

Pinto voted for Trump in 2024, he admitted to the Times.

“He is leveraging the power of being president to launch currencies, when he seems trustworthy in the public’s eye,” Pinto reportedly said. “It is kind of incredible. It is almost a legal scam.”

A $TRUMP memecoin representative did not respond to the New York Times' request for comment.

Read the full report here.