Controversial activist offloads 50% of TIKTOK memecoin supply

Ryan Fournier, chair of Students for Trump, faced a backlash after selling half the supply of a memecoin created to celebrate the lifting of the ban on TikTok in the United States, The Block reported.

On January 19, Fournier floated the idea of a memecoin, Official TIKTOK COIN (TIKTOK). An X user going by Asta created the coin on Pump.fun and sent the activist half of the supply.

reply with ur wallet address, ill send you 50% of this https://t.co/7pcj9wWUl7

— asta (@astaxsol) January 19, 2025

The token quickly surged in price, reaching a market capitalisation of more than $90m. But that evening, as prices began to fall, Fournier admitted he had sold his holdings. A wallet he had previously identified as his swapped 505 million TIKTOK for 2,800 SOL ($700,000). After that, the coin’s capitalisation plunged to $5m.

At first, Fournier tried to justify the move by citing fears of a scam, claiming that Asta had been the first to sell, although the latter’s wallet shows no such transactions.

Asta, who said the project was an attempt to “start a cool movement”, put full responsibility for “stealing money” on Fournier.

that stupid @RyanAFournier sold EVERYTHING I SENT HIM, he said he would never sell and that he was contacting tiktok.

this guy really just stole so much money https://t.co/WGweALOUTc

— asta (@astaxsol) January 19, 2025

Later the activist said he had succumbed to a panic sell-off.

“I wasn’t going to sell, […] and then suddenly the token started dropping at a speed I had never seen and people started selling. I didn’t know what the guy who created it was doing, so I just… I screwed up and it’s my fault,” he wrote on X.

Even so, Fournier denied making any profit from the sale, insisted he had been deceived by the token’s creator and, in one post, even promised to “make it right”.

The activist said he planned to “stay away from crypto” until he understood “who can be trusted”. He also boasted of purported ties with Donald Trump’s crypto advisers and a position in the president’s administration.

Staying away from Crypto.

I tweeted a few times today about $Trump and a newly created coin called $TikTok.

I had someone reach out earlier, and they wanted to make a coin to support TikTok’s comeback.

That turned out to be a chaotic mess, because I was scammed by said…

— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) January 19, 2025

Earlier, Fournier repeatedly promoted the memecoin Restore The Republic (RTR), claiming Donald Trump was involved in its creation. The token plunged by 95%, after Eric Trump called those rumours “absolutely false”.