MoonPay, a crypto funds firm, secured an important $160 million in mixed loans from Galaxy Digital and Ripple to maintain the surging demand and purchases of President Donald Trump’s official Solana meme coin, TRUMP, through the weekend of its launch.
The trio’s collaboration, which was detailed by the MoonPay President Keith Grossman on the ”When Shift Occurs” podcast, required MoonPay CEO Ivan Soto-Wright to “signal away his life” and the corporate to “promise” it had no liens on its reserve funds.
“The volumes had been simply gigantic,” Grossman mentioned, “All the liquidity that we use to kind of wire the crypto was locked in BlackRock accounts in a conventional finance kind of method… and it is Saturday.”
The best way to borrow $160m in $USDC on a vacation weekend @KeithGrossman, president of enterprise at @Moonpay, reveals the loopy story behind how he managed to borrow $160m with @novogratz and @bgarlinghouse’s assist so as to make certain the $TRUMP launch would succeed…
And the… pic.twitter.com/8zKugL2idN
— MR SHIFT 🦁 (@KevinWSHPod) February 11, 2025
The crypto funds it did have helpful had been getting used up quickly due to the Trump meme coin staff’s course that customers may use cellular meme coin buying and selling app, Moonshot, for which MoonPay is the unique crypto funds supplier.
Moonshot simplifies the meme coin shopping for course of, permitting customers to enroll with an e-mail handle, and permitting them to fund their accounts with credit score or debit playing cards. The app eschews the complexities that crypto novices might face with buying and selling on-chain by way of decentralized exchanges, making it a perfect possibility for newcomers.
Subsequently, when new customers had been seeking to purchase the TRUMP token on the app, they had been exchanging their funds for MoonPay’s crypto reserves, notably stablecoin USDC, which was then used to buy Trump’s meme coin on the Solana blockchain.
If the corporate did not have the liquidity to proceed facilitating purchases of the token, then new customers—of which MoonPay says it onboarded 750,000 of through the week of the TRUMP launch—might not have been in a position to acquire entry to the token. That will have hindered the token’s fast development within the early days, and impacted different MoonPay customers as effectively.
Grossman mentioned the app would’ve mentioned, “Sorry, doesn’t work,” had MoonPay run out of funds.
To keep away from the difficulty, Grossman mentioned that he and Soto-Wright labored with MoonPay CFO Mouna Siala to forecast the quantity of funds it might require, with the preliminary estimate of $50 million shortly doubling to $100 million after reevaluating the token’s development within the first 24 hours.
With its reserves locked in conventional monetary programs, Grossman mentioned he texted Galaxy’s Mike Novogratz, and after a short dialog, a mortgage was agreed upon and underway, forcing MoonPay’s groups to scramble on paperwork whereas verifying it had the funds to pay again a mortgage due to a connection via BlackRock.
However the $100 million wasn’t sufficient. As demand continued to surge for TRUMP the next day, Grossman mentioned that MoonPay turned to Ripple Labs CEO Brad Garlinghouse.
“We underestimated the demand of this Trump token,” the MoonPay staff informed Garlinghouse, per Grossman.
The Ripple chief agreed to assist if MoonPay may get Novogratz to conform to the association, given the earlier deal in place—and finally, Grossman mentioned, the extra $60 million was despatched by Ripple to Galaxy, after which finally transferred to MoonPay.
As conventional monetary gamers got here on-line in Europe and the US on the next Monday and Tuesday, MoonPay was in a position to reestablish entry to its funds, paying again its loans in full by Tuesday afternoon in keeping with Grossman.
The TRUMP token noticed greater than $20 billion in buying and selling quantity on common throughout its first 5 days after launch, in keeping with information from CoinGecko, rising shortly to a totally diluted valuation of greater than $73 billion in lower than 48 hours.
Within the days after its launch, Trump’s meme coin gained spot listings from notable centralized exchanges like Binance and Coinbase, additional aiding the flexibility for inexperienced customers to realize entry to the token.
A MoonPay consultant confirmed to Decrypt that Grossman’s telling of the state of affairs was correct, although representatives from Galaxy and Ripple didn’t instantly reply to Decrypt’s requests for remark.
TRUMP is now buying and selling at $15.37, down greater than 79% from its all time excessive.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
