How MoonPay Got Help from Galaxy Digital and Ripple to Support Trump’s Solana Meme Coin

MoonPay, a company that helps with crypto payments, secured $160 million in loans from Galaxy Digital and Ripple to meet the huge demand for the TRUMP meme coin, which was launched on the Solana blockchain by former President Donald Trump.

MoonPay President, Keith Grossman, shared the details on a podcast. He explained that MoonPay’s CEO, Ivan Soto-Wright, had to sign an agreement promising that the company had no claims on its reserve funds to make the deal happen.

Grossman explained, “The demand was huge.” They had to use up all their available crypto funds quickly, especially since users could buy TRUMP coins through an app called Moonshot. MoonPay is the exclusive payment provider for Moonshot, which makes buying meme coins easy, even for people new to crypto.

Moonshot allowed people to sign up easily with just an email address and fund their accounts with credit or debit cards. This simple process helped new users buy the TRUMP coin. To make the purchases, MoonPay used its stablecoin reserves (USDC), which were then exchanged for the TRUMP coin on Solana.

When demand surged, MoonPay needed enough funds to keep supporting the purchases. Without the necessary liquidity, users wouldn’t have been able to buy the coin, which could have slowed its growth. Grossman said that if they ran out of money, the app would have stopped working and users would’ve been told, “Sorry, doesn’t work.”

To prevent this, Grossman, Soto-Wright, and MoonPay’s CFO, Mouna Siala, worked together to predict how much money they would need. They started with an estimate of $50 million, but that number quickly doubled to $100 million after seeing how fast the TRUMP token was growing.

With MoonPay’s reserves locked up in traditional financial systems, Grossman reached out to Mike Novogratz from Galaxy Digital. After a quick conversation, a loan was agreed on, and MoonPay worked hard to finalize the paperwork while confirming they could repay the loan through a connection with BlackRock.

However, the $100 million wasn’t enough. The next day, demand for TRUMP tokens kept rising, so MoonPay turned to Ripple CEO, Brad Garlinghouse. They admitted to underestimating the token’s demand, and Garlinghouse agreed to help—on the condition that Novogratz approved the plan. In the end, Ripple sent an additional $60 million to Galaxy, which was transferred to MoonPay.

By the following Monday and Tuesday, traditional financial systems came back online, and MoonPay was able to repay its loans. The TRUMP token saw massive success, with over $20 billion in trading volume in the first five days. Its value soared, reaching a valuation of over $73 billion in less than two days.