$160M Liquidity Crunch Almost Blocked 750,000 Users From Trump’s Meme Coin

Key Takeaways

• MoonPay’s president revealed that the Trump memecoin launch created a liquidity crisis on the platform.
• To meet demand, Keith Grossman lent $100 million from Galaxy Digital and $60 million from Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse.
• By Tuesday, MoonPay had returned its entire loan by the time the traditional banking systems came online.

MoonPay’s president has revealed that the Trump memecoin frenzy led to a multi-million liquidity crisis on the platform. However, Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse and Galaxy Digital’s Mike Novogratz managed to avert the crisis.

The primary reason for the liquidity crisis was the weekend launch of the Trump memecoin. Even though MoonPay had reserve cash, they couldn’t access it until Monday to meet the Trump token demand.

MoonPay Averts TRUMP Liquidity Crisis 

MoonPay’s president Keith Grossman revealed on a podcast that the team behind the meme token directed it toward moonshot, a memecoin launch platform similar to Pump.fun.

Grossman explained that MoonPay is available on Moonshot, and the growing demand for the Trump token had dwindled the existing reserves on the platform.

Thus, if the platform hadn’t arranged for nearly $100 million in liquidity, almost 750,000 users would have been blocked from buying the Trump memecoin.

MoonPay was unable to access the cash reserves until Monday because the launch fell on a Saturday. Later, Grossman contacted Galaxy Digital’s Mike Novogratz to loan about $100 million USDC to bring Trump liquidity on the platform. 

In return for the $100 million loan, MoonPay CEO Ivan Soto-Wright liquidated his Bitcoin holdings as a guarantee against the loan. 

However, on Sunday, the platform realized the demand had outpaced the $100 million liquidity they estimated, and the team reached out to Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse to lend another $60 million to meet the demand.

MoonPay’s $160 Million Crisis Highlights Crypto Accessibility

Unlike most traditional financial institutions and stock exchanges, crypto trading is conducted 24/7, 365 days a year.

Solving MoonPay’s liquidity crisis by arranging $160 million and transferring it took just a few minutes over the weekend, which would have been impossible with the traditional financial system, which prevents companies from accessing their own funds during crises.

The Trump memecoin shot up to $40 billion market capitalization on its first launch day and reached a $75 billion market cap on Sunday.

However, since then, the token has lost more than 70% of its valuation from the top.