The team behind US first lady Melania Trump’s memecoin, Melania Meme (MELANIA), has moved $30 million worth of the token out of the project’s community funds and has begun selling them, says blockchain analytics firm Bubblemaps.

Bubblemaps said in an April 7 X post that 50 million MELANIA tokens worth around $30 million “was moved from community funds — and is now being quietly sold, with no explanation from the team.”

It added the tokens were moved to a single wallet before being “split across multiple addresses.” From there, Bubblemaps said $3 million worth were transferred to exchanges, two new $6 million positions were opened, and $500,000 worth of MELANIA was sold.

Source: Bubblemaps

“No one from the MELANIA team has addressed this. Not the movements. Not the selling,” it added.

Bubblemaps said that 92% of MELANIA’s supply is held by “team wallets” and claimed that “the damage isn’t done yet.” 

MELANIA freefalls from peak high 

The MELANIA token was launched on Jan. 19, a day after Donald Trump launched his own memecoin and a day before he was due to re-enter the White House.

The token has essentially lost all its value since launch and is down over 96% from its January high of over $13, and is trading at $0.51 — down over 7.5% in the last day, according to CoinGecko.

Bubblemaps said last month that it found that Hayden Davis, who said he helped create MELANIA, had started “covertly selling $MELANIA tokens via single-sided liquidity.”

Related: Libra, Melania creator’s ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ memecoin crashes 99%

The firm claimed Davis had also used the tactic to quietly sell LIBRA, a memecoin he also copped to making that was shared by Argentine President Javier Milei, which caused a political scandal after the token’s value cratered.

Interest in memecoins has recently waned amid a wider market rout with data from Dune Analytics in March finding that the number of tokens graduating from Solana-based memecoin launchpad, Pump.fun, had dropped by over two-thirds since January, falling from 5400 per week to just 1500. 

The total number of tokens launching on Solana is also down, with data from SolScan showing only 31,651 launched on April 5, less than one-third of the 95,578 created at the peak of the memecoin frenzy this year on Jan. 26.

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Malicious actors are attempting to steal crypto with malware embedded in fake Microsoft Office extensions uploaded to the software hosting site SourceForge, according to cybersecurity firm Kaspersky.

One of the malicious listings, called “officepackage,” has real Microsoft Office add-ins but hides a malware called ClipBanker that replaces a copied crypto wallet address on a computer’s clipboard with the attacker’s address, Kaspersky’s Anti-Malware Research Team said in an April 8 report.

“Users of crypto wallets typically copy addresses instead of typing them. If the device is infected with ClipBanker, the victim’s money will end up somewhere entirely unexpected,” the team said.

The fake project’s page on SourceForge mimics a legitimate developer tool page, showing the office add-ins and download buttons and can also appear in search results.

Kaspersky said it found a crypto-stealing malware on the software hosting website SourceForge. Source: Kaspersky

Kaspersky said another feature of the malware’s infection chain involves sending infected device information such as IP addresses, country and usernames to the hackers through Telegram.

The malware can also scan the infected system for signs it’s already been installed previously or for antivirus software and delete itself.

Attackers could sell system access to others

Kaspersky says some of the files in the bogus download are small, which raises “red flags, as office applications are never that small, even when compressed.” 

Other files are padded out with junk to convince users they are looking at a genuine software installer.

The firm said attackers secure access to an infected system “through multiple methods, including unconventional ones.”

“While the attack primarily targets cryptocurrency by deploying a miner and ClipBanker, the attackers could sell system access to more dangerous actors.” 

The interface is in Russian, which Kaspersky speculates could mean it targets Russian-speaking users.

“Our telemetry indicates that 90% of potential victims are in Russia, where 4,604 users encountered the scheme between early January and late March,” the report stated.

To avoid falling victim, Kaspersky recommended only downloading software from trusted sources as pirated programs and alternative download options carry higher risks.

Related: Hackers are selling counterfeit phones with crypto-stealing malware

“Distributing malware disguised as pirated software is anything but new,” the company said. “As users seek ways to download applications outside official sources, attackers offer their own. They keep looking for new ways to make their websites look legit.”

Other firms have also been raising the alarm over new forms of malware targeting crypto users. 

Threat Fabric said in a March 28 report it found a new family of malware that can launch a fake overlay to trick Android users into providing their crypto seed phrases as it takes over the device.

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The Trump administration’s sweeping tariffs could collapse US demand for Bitcoin mining rigs, which would benefit mining operations outside the country as manufacturers will look outside the US to sell their surplus inventory for cheaper, says Hashlabs Mining CEO Jaran Mellerud.

“As machine prices rise in the U.S., they could paradoxically decrease in the rest of the world,” Mellerud said in an April 8 report. “The demand for shipping machines to the U.S. is set to plummet, likely nearing zero.”

“Manufacturers will be left with excess stock originally intended for the US market. To offload this surplus, they’ll likely need to lower prices to attract buyers in other regions,” he added.

Falling mining rig prices could see non-US mining operations scale up and take a larger slice of Bitcoin’s total hashrate, Mellerud said.

Source: Jaran Mellerud

US President Donald Trump unveiled his administration’s “reciprocal tariffs” on nearly every country on April 2. Some of the largest crypto mining machine makers are based in countries hardest hit by the tariffs, including Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, which saw tariffs of 36%, 32% and 24%, respectively.

Crypto mining rig makers Bitmain, MicroBT and Canaan moved to some of these countries to circumvent a 25% tariff that Trump imposed on China in 2018 during his last administration.

Annual change in US tariffs on China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand since 2017. Source: Hashlabs Mining

Mellerud noted that Trump’s latest tariffs would mean a mining rig that initially costs $1,000 would be priced at $1,240 in the US.

“Meanwhile, in Finland and most other countries, there are no tariffs, so the cost of a $1,000 machine remains unchanged.”

“In an industry as cost-sensitive as Bitcoin mining, a 22% price increase on machines can make operations financially unsustainable,” he added.

No coming back from Trump’s tariffs — ‘Damage is done’

Mellerud believes a future reversal of the Trump administration’s tariffs wouldn’t restore US crypto mining operators’ confidence.

“Even if these tariffs are rolled back within a few months, the damage is done — confidence in long-term planning has been shaken,” Mellerud said. “Few will feel comfortable making major investments when critical variables can change overnight.”

He said US miners felt reassured when Trump returned to the White House, expecting a more stable regulatory environment. 

Related: Bitcoin hashrate tops 1 Zetahash in historic first, trackers show

“But they are now experiencing the flip side of his unpredictable policy shifts,” Mellerud said.

The US accounts for nearly 40% of the network’s hashrate. Mellerud said there’s no reason for US miners to unplug their machines and doesn’t expect the total Bitcoin hashrate coming from the US to drop.

However, the path to expansion is now “steep and uncertain,” he said, and as a result, the US could lose a considerable share of hashrate. 

Trump’s tariffs have shaken up almost every market, including the crypto markets and Bitcoin (BTC), which is down 4% over the last 24 hours to $76,470, CoinGecko data shows.

Bitcoin is now 30% off the $108,786 all-time high it set on Jan. 20 — the same day that Trump re-entered the White House.

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