Official Trump (TRUMP), the meme token launched on Solana in January 2025 ahead of President Donald Trump's inauguration, rallied above $3 during Asian trading hours, at one point adding more than 80% to its price and wiping out over $30 million in liquidations. The meme token later pulled back to $2.94, CoinGecko data shows.

Despite the spike, TRUMP remains down more than 90% from its launch-era highs above $70, set within days of the token's debut. The rally, however, demonstrated how quickly the asset responds to any news of new crypto activity from the Trump family, whose ventures span the TRUMP token, the World Liberty Financial platform and its USD1 stablecoin.

Trading volumes also reached a three-month peak above $1.79 billion, spiking abruptly after a long period of depressed activity.

Short squeeze drove the rally

The main driver of the move was a short squeeze — a dynamic in which rising prices force leveraged bearish traders to buy back their positions, which in turn accelerates the upward move. The squeeze caused $8.59 million in short liquidations, the forced closure of such positions, on Binance. TRUMP went through roughly $30 million in total liquidations over the past 24 hours, making it one of the leading tokens to undergo a squeeze, according to Coinalyze and Coinglass data.

The rally also followed Bitcoin's rapid recovery above $79,000, which was itself followed by a quick slide — raising the question of whether TRUMP's gains can be sustained beyond the wave of forced liquidations.

Why did TRUMP rally?

The main catalyst on Asian markets was a rumor of a new Trump family coin launching on Robinhood, the retail brokerage that also offers crypto trading. At the time of the biggest price changes, the claim was unconfirmed and circulated only on social media, including on X and X.

Some traders chose to short TRUMP, expecting the new launch to drain excess liquidity from the meme token. Instead, the buildup of short positions produced a different market reaction. As TRUMP moved above $3, most of those shorts were liquidated, leaving almost no remaining liquidity up to $3.50, liquidation heat maps show. This positioning may mean the rally has run its course, though traders are likely to be more cautious about setting up new short positions.

Is the TRUMP rally sustainable?

The rebound showed the TRUMP brand remains among the more resilient in the crypto space, capable of sharp short-term reversals — a pattern typical of memecoins, which trade on attention and social-media momentum rather than cash flows or product usage.

TRUMP also climbed despite recent claims by Justin Sun — the Tron founder who has served as an adviser to World Liberty Financial — of achieving a legal victory over World Liberty Fi regarding his frozen assets (related coverage). Nor did Sun's recent exposure of USD1, the dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by World Liberty Financial, as an asset that could be frozen and clawed back from user wallets harm the brand.

Following TRUMP's move, the World Liberty Fi token WLFI expanded to a one-month peak of $0.07 before correcting to its usual range around $0.06. Recent market volatility has driven rapid recoveries across multiple assets, but has also shown signs of a rapidly reversing trend, which would make the TRUMP and WLFI rallies unsustainable, the report notes.

There are also no confirmations that either WLFI or TRUMP would have a new 'use case', or that holders would receive any additional allocations in the event of a new coin launch.

Despite the setback, TRUMP open interest — the total value of unsettled derivative contracts — is back to $172 million, its highest level since April. The presence of newly built short and long positions may lead to more active trading and price fluctuations. At the same time, traders continue to monitor social media and on-chain data to intercept any new asset launches or seek confirmation of a new Trump family asset.