Melania Team Dumps $1M Liquidity, Igniting New Rug-Pull Jitters

Fresh fears of a potential soft rug pull have gripped the MELANIA token community after blockchain tracking platform Arkham Intelligence reported that the team behind the meme coin had moved $1 million worth of MELANIA tokens from Meteora liquidity pools to a new wallet.

While this might seem like a routine transaction, historical behavior suggests otherwise.

On multiple occasions, similar liquidity withdrawals by the team have occurred in recent weeks.

This latest activity follows a string of suspicious transactions uncovered by Lookonchain over the past few days, indicating that the MELANIA team sold over $1.5 million in tokens within 72 hours.

On April 28 alone, $938,000 in MELANIA was sold, two days after a $632,000 sell-off.

According to blockchain data from Solscan, the sales were spread across multiple wallets, suggesting deliberate fragmentation to obscure the true extent of the selling pressure.

Despite a 21% rebound in MELANIA’s price over the past week, the token remains 96% below its all-time high of $13.70, reached on January 20.

Calculated Liquidation and Historical Patterns: A Deeper Look

The MELANIA team’s selling tactics have taken on an increasingly calculated form.

According to Lookonchain, the team has been employing a DCA strategy, which, in typical investment scenarios, helps minimize emotional decision-making by buying or selling assets in small, timed increments.

In this case, however, the strategy is weaponized to offload massive token holdings without causing catastrophic price slippage that would alert the community too early.

This approach ensures sustained downward pressure while masking the full extent of the impact.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. Back on April 20, blockchain researcher EmberCN reported that the MELANIA team had sold over $14.75 million in tokens during the previous month through centralized exchanges and liquidity pool manipulation on decentralized platforms.

On April 19 alone, they sold 2.95 million tokens for roughly $1.2 million worth of SOL. Despite community speculation and repeated red flags, these actions continue without consequences.

MELANIA, which once had a market cap of $13 billion, has now lost 99% of its value, mirroring LIBRA’s spectacular downfall.

Meme Coin Momentum Fizzles as Political Tokens Lose Luster

Though meme coins captured 27% of crypto investor interest in Q1 2025, second only to AI tokens, recent performance trends suggest waning enthusiasm.

TRUMP, another politically themed meme token, plummeted from a high of $75.35 to just $8.14 in three months, despite renewed interest tied to a $300 million token unlock and a promotional dinner event featuring President Trump himself.

The fading excitement is evident across the ecosystem, with meme coins now struggling; investors are pivoting toward narratives with more substance, such as AI and real-world asset (RWA) tokenization.

The concerns extend beyond the crypto-native world. Legal pressure is mounting against such questionable behavior.

In an unrelated but parallel case, Nike is facing a class-action lawsuit from RTFKT investors who allege that the sportswear giant executed a soft rug pull when it abruptly shut down the NFT platform in December 2024.

Plaintiffs claim that Nike failed to disclose the regulatory risks and abandoned the project after hyping it, a pattern similar to that seen in MELANIA and LIBRA.

With major brands like Nike and projects like MELANIA under fire, the meme coin supercycle is in decline, possibly giving way to a new, more regulated, and cautious phase in the sector.

For MELANIA holders, the picture remains bleak. The token’s price sits near rock bottom, and with each new liquidity removal or team wallet transaction, faith in the project dwindles further. New investors should refrain from investing and seek more suitable investment products.

The post Melania Team Dumps $1M Liquidity, Igniting New Rug-Pull Jitters appeared first on Cryptonews.