$TRUMP, the token associated with the U.S. president, has left behind many legends of sudden wealth in the crypto world. Many once rejoiced at its rise, while others lamented missing out on a life-changing opportunity—but over a year has passed, the stock market has surged while crypto has faded, yet speculation never stops. Few now care much about the story of Trump Coin.
But recently, someone in the crypto space has once again become the center of attention due to Trump Coin—@kimchi1x. It is said that he made $40 million on Trump Coin.
Unlike many well-known meme coin traders who became famous for making large profits, Kimchi’s X account has nearly 80,000 followers, but he has never posted anything related to meme coin trading.
His X account is filled with posts showcasing wealth—luxury food, sports cars, and designer watches. Since February last year, his X account has consistently featured only such posts: no captions, just occasional photos or videos every few months documenting his life after striking it rich.
So it’s a bit surprising that he’s gone viral this time, given that he’s been showing off for over a year—but now, suddenly, every tweet is about how he made $40 million on TrumpCoin.
This latest tweet reached 25.6 million impressions, compared to around 500,000 previously.
There is much skepticism on X about whether Kimchi made so much money through Trump Coin. While many have profited from Trump Coin, those who gained widespread fame typically have on-chain records to verify their trades, or were already well-known meme coin traders within the community—so no one questions them.
However, there is no on-chain data to verify Kimchi's claimed $40 million profit. @sukie234 pointed out that many of Kimchi's luxury displays are AI-generated fake images:
Some also mentioned that many of the items Kimchi flaunts are borrowed from others:
Another well-known meme coin trader, Orangie, conducted an in-person interview with Kimchi before Trump’s coin launch. From that interview, we learned that Kimchi only began trading meme coins in early April 2024, but he quickly got up to speed. By November 2024, he had achieved monthly profits of at least six figures in USD.
During the interview, we could see his dog-sweeping environment, and a Solana wallet with a balance of $150,000 appeared on the computer screen. He said he spends 15 hours a day scanning chains and sweeping dogs.
He also mentioned some more personal topics, such as how he was studying business at the University of Southern California, primarily because his parents wanted him to. In the video, Orangie also shared real-time updates about his meeting with kimchi with other members of his small Discord group via video chat—groups like these typically consist of on-chain-recognized, skilled, and well-known players who come together to play dog.
In summary, I tend to believe that Kimchi’s reported $40 million profit from Trump coin is genuine, and I have no reason to doubt it. After all, Trump coin has already created too many wealth legends, and there is sufficient liquidity to allow these individuals to exit with profits.
A person’s fate is predetermined. Orangie interviewed Kimchi on January 14, 2025, during which Kimchi stated he would stop once he earned eight figures in USD. A few days later, TrumpCoin emerged, and Kimchi achieved his goal, beginning to enjoy his newfound wealth.
On Kimchi’s Porsche 911, a rather poignant conversation took place. Orangie asked Kimchi, “Don’t you believe in holding long-term?”
Kimchi’s answer was that he believes in it, but he has developed PTSD from long-term holding. Orangie assumed it was because he got deeply trapped by holding through 2021, but Kimchi said it was because he took large positions at the peaks of $POPCAT and other high-market-cap memecoins, suffered massive losses, and as a result, no longer believes in long-term holding—he’s now a paper hand.
After beginning to trade meme coins in April 2024, Kimchi initially thought the meme coin trend might end with the summer. At that time, he couldn’t have foreseen the life-changing opportunity that was about to unfold. Later on, he came to believe that meme coins might never truly reach a “final chapter.”
Kimchi was lucky. pump.fun’s innovation—offering extremely low costs and dramatically simplifying the process of launching and trading tokens—has profoundly changed the way meme coins are played. Before that, everyone was accustomed to slow-paced, long-cycle community building. The opportunity we missed was largely due to being trapped in the惯性思维 of meme coins, never realizing that attention could be monetized so quickly and so wildly.
If you pay close attention to what meme coin traders share on X, you’ll notice many young people like Kimchi. When they realized that by sitting at their computers nonstop, working intensely to spot on-chain developments faster than anyone else and clicking a few buttons, they could amass wealth beyond their wildest dreams, they seized what might be the only opportunity of their lives—and earned massive fortunes.
Kimchi got exposed to meme coins because a friend he met in Fortnite shared with him that he could earn a decent daily income by trading meme coins. Looking back, the meme coin boom of 2024–2025 may have been the most successful instance of "mass adoption" in the crypto market since NFTs.
Trump, through his Trump coin, has withdrawn massive liquidity from the crypto space. These young people, who became wealthy because of Trump and had no prior belief in cryptocurrency—or lost their faith in it due to the fast-paced nature of meme coins—will no longer reinvest their gains back into this market.
Although young, they have been through the trials of the market and understand its harshness. They know exactly what kind of game they are playing.
Will meme coins never regain their former glory?
No. Whether or not we are still young, we all still want to defy fate and change our destiny.
Young people no longer have just stock trading as an option. They bet on the just-concluded World Cup, trade sneakers, streetwear, Pokémon cards, and in-game skins—any market that can still generate profits, no matter how niche, proves to be far more resilient than we ever imagined.
Countless young people, like Kimchi, have entered the market with the dream of making just $1,000 in a single day. Most may fall in the blood and fire of trading, but someone always rises to the top.
Meme coins driven purely by attention may struggle to recapture their peak. Many recent participants have noted that Jimothy, the meme image that went viral globally and was shared by the White House’s X account, has barely surpassed a $50 million market cap. This may indicate that this attention-based model is experiencing narrative fatigue—where a trending topic or image on TikTok or other social media platforms can no longer reach valuations of hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.
But this doesn’t mean the story of meme coins has come to an end. The opportunity to change your life may already be on its way.