Wallets linked to the team behind President Donald Trump’s Solana-based TRUMP memecoin sent a large batch of tokens to Binance on March 12, adding a new supply glut to a project that has crashed to an all-time low.
On March 12, blockchain facts from Arkham Intelligence showed that a BitGo custodial wallet associated with the TRUMP team transferred 5 million TRUMP tokens, worth approximately $14.4 million, to Binance, the largest crypto trading platform in the world.
The move followed a similar transfer in late February, when 5 million TRUMP tokens, worth approximately $17.3 million, were sent to Binance via BitGo-linked custody flows.
All told, the deposits amount to almost 10 million TRUMP tokens, worth approximately $31.7 million at the time of the transactions.
Deposits into exchange-linked wallets are closely watched as they often precede sales, especially when the sender controls a large allocation.
However, blockchain data only shows that tokens have arrived at a location where they can be sold; it cannot confirm whether the tokens were sold immediately or held for later execution.
In memecoin markets, teams and large holders also route the supply through market makers, which can blur the trail once custody and execution intervene.
Meanwhile, the latest transfer comes as Binance seeks to limit the scope of US surveillance, after a Wall Street Journal report said the Justice Department is investigating whether Iran used the exchange to evade sanctions.
However, Binance has denied any wrongdoing and has sued the Journal and Dow Jones for defamation.
An acquisition event becomes a supply test
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Facts from DeFiLlama shows that the project recently unlocked $558.09 million worth of tokens to insiders in January. According to the data, TRUMP insiders control 80% of the total supply of 1 billion tokens.
Token unlocking schemes can indeed be routine in venture-backed crypto projects.
However, they can become price catalysts when a new liquid supply becomes controlled by insiders and begins to move into locations of high liquidity.
Given the above, this type of transfer could lead to sales speculation, especially considering that the TRUMP memecoin team has a history of systematically divesting the token.
Meanwhile, this action comes as the TRUMP token price action has left little cushion for additional supply.
Data from CryptoSlate shows that TRUMP has fallen to $2.73, representing a decline of approximately 96% from its January 2025 peak of $73.43.
While the broader crypto market has also suffered significant losses over the period, TRUMP’s price crash has proven more significant as the token started as a political brand extension of the US president and has raised recurring questions for ethics critics and regulators.
Additionally, retail performance metrics have increased political sensitivity surrounding the token.
Last month, CryptoRank reported that losses at Trump family-linked memecoins, including TRUMP and MELANIA, had surpassed $4.3 billion, with nearly 2 million wallets underwater.
The company noted that the main beneficiaries of these tokens were insiders, with just 45 early wallets posting around $1.2 billion in profits. It added:
“While insiders made more than $600 million through fees and token sales, retail holders absorbed the losses at a 20:1 ratio: for every dollar insiders made, ordinary investors lost $20.”
In light of this, the key question is whether the team’s newly unlocked inventory will head to market, which would further increase selling pressure on an already struggling token.
A web of Trump-Binance connections
All this drama is taking place against the backdrop of deepening financial ties between the Trump family’s crypto ventures and Binance.
For context, Trump pardoned Zhao in October 2025. Before that, representatives of the Trump family held discussions about taking a financial stake in Binance.US, the American branch of the stock exchange.
However, Zhao denied these claims.
In addition, World Liberty Financial, another crypto company associated with the Trump family, launched a dollar-pegged stablecoin called USD1, which was issued on Binance’s blockchain.
Binance then used the stablecoin to receive a $2 billion investment from MGX Fund Management Limited, an investment fund based in the United Arab Emirates. At the same time, the company has aggressively promoted the asset to its 300 million users.
All these moves have intensified questions about conflicts of interest, given the overlap between the president’s family’s crypto activities and Binance’s efforts to rebuild its position in the United States.
Meanwhile, the White House has previously said that Trump’s business interests are in a trust controlled by his children, and the administration has dismissed conflict-of-interest allegations related to his crypto-related ventures.
Binance research clashes with politically exposed flows
On the other hand, the TRUMP token transfer also lands in an ever-widening compliance spotlight on Binance in Washington.
The Wall Street Journal reported on March 11 that the Justice Department is investigating whether Iran used Binance to circumvent US sanctions.
In addition, Senator Richard Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, opened one inquiry on the platform after reports emerged that Iranian users accessed more than 1,500 Binance accounts and approximately $1.7 billion flowed to Iran-linked entities and networks.
According to the legislator:
“The scale of the recently revealed illegal transfers – undetected until nearly $2 billion flowed to sanctioned entities – and the unexplained dismissal of internal investigators raise questions about Binance’s compliance with US sanctions and banking laws, as well as the 2023 agreement to resolve the previous federal investigation.”
The lawmaker framed the allegations as a test of whether Binance’s compliance controls have weakened since its record 2023 settlement with US authorities.
Under that settlement, Binance paid about $4.3 billion in fines and revised its compliance measures after prosecutors said it failed to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program. Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty, resigned as CEO and later served a prison sentence.
In response to these allegations, Binance has strongly denied the claims, while stating that it has recorded a 97% drop in exposure to illegal transactions over the past two years.
At the same time, the company stated that it helped law enforcement seize more than $752 million in illicit funds during the same period.
Meanwhile, the company has also touted recent court victories in civil lawsuits related to terrorist financing allegations as further evidence of its compliance efforts.
On March 12, Binance declared that an Anti-Terrorism Act case in Alabama was dismissed and that a separate ATA case in New York was also dismissed.
While these claims differ from current sanctions-related research, Binance stated that these results demonstrate the company’s commitment to transparency, security and lawful conduct in everything it does.
According to the company:
“[The] courts that have reviewed these claims have found them wanting on both the facts and the law, reinforcing that allegations related to sanctions compliance and terrorist financing are serious matters that must be supported by evidence rather than rhetoric and speculation.