Nearly a million people lost a total of 3.8 billion dollars after buying the meme coin $TRUMP of US President Donald Trump. The figure comes from the crypto-analytics firm Nansen, which studied publicly visible blockchain transactions through the end of June. The story in one sentence: two out of every three people who bought - lost.

And who earned? Precisely the one whose name is on the coin. Trump pulled around 636 million dollars from $TRUMP - nearly half of his total crypto earnings of 1.4 billion dollars last year. The coin, launched three days before his inauguration in 2025, is now worth 1.69 dollars - a fall of 98 percent from its peak of 75.35 dollars. Those who got in at the peak watched their money evaporate almost to zero.

This is not a random market misfortune, but a structure. Under the Trump administration, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced it would not regulate meme coins as securities and withdrew several lawsuits against crypto companies. A White House spokesperson boasted that the administration had made the USA the „crypto capital of the world.“ When the one who writes the rules is the same one who profits from the game, the word „regulation“ becomes a joke.

The lesson is as old as gambling. When someone sells you a promise of getting rich overnight, ask yourself who actually earns on every illusion sold. Meme coins have no product, no revenue, nothing but a name and hope - and hope, as these 3.8 billion show, is the most expensive commodity on the market. In the Balkans we know these stories; only the names of the pyramids change.