Trump’s Meme Coin Mints Billions in Just One Weekend
The president’s first official NFT skyrockets, raising eyebrows along with his fortune.
President Trump has been able to turn his inauguration into cold hard cash, making billions overnight with a cryptocurrency token that now accounts for nearly 90 percent of his wealth.
The new “$TRUMP” non-fungible token, released Friday evening, is touted as “the only official Trump meme,” which can be purchased through a blockchain. This decentralized digital ledger accepts secure transactions. The NFT is just the latest line of branded items promoted by the incoming president, who has helped to sell to his supporters everything from branded bibles to sneakers to jewel-encrusted watches. The latest item for sale has led Mr. Trump to becoming one of the world’s 25 richest people, according to a report from Axios.
“It’s time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING! Join my very special Trump Community,” thePresident wrote in a post on Truth Social along with an image of the meme token with an image that depicts a slenderer Mr. Trump raising a fist with the words “FIGHT. FIGHT. FIGHT” scrolling across.
The meme coins were sold for about $10 each at the launch of the sale and quickly rose to $70 on Sunday morning before falling sharply after he and his wife, Melania, posted a meme coin for herself named “$MELANIA” that opened at $5 per sale. The value of “$Trump” dipped down to $40 before climbing back up to $60 on Monday morning, according to a report from CNN.
The meme coin has a fully diluted market capitalization totaling more than $72 million dollars and gave the incoming president $50 Billion worth of capital out of thin air, according to Axios.
Meme coins are known for being a highly unpredictable facet of the cryptocurrency market. The tokens were created initially as a humorous concept with not much actual value, but they can quickly see a dramatic surge in prices if they gain sufficient interest from investors like “$Trump” has over the weekend.
The sale of the coins has raised concern, with critics saying it enables an opportunity to curry favor with the president.
“Now anyone in world can essentially deposit money into bank account of President of USA with a couple clicks. Every favor — geopolitical, corporate or personal — is now on sale, right out in the open,” Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as the White House Communications Director during Mr. Trump’s first time in office, said in a post on X.
“The TrumpCoin is the democratization of kleptocracy,” NYU marketing professor and podcast host Scott Galloway said in a series of posts on his Threads account. “Likely conversation (speculation). Putin (to Trump): ‘We’re thinking about (aggressively) purchasing $10b of TrumpCoin this week. Also, please cease arm shipments to Ukraine.’ Congress has been for sale a while. Now the world is for sale.”
Both meme coins are the first to be endorsed by Mr. Trump, who once said that cryptocurrency was “based in thin air” but changed his stance after he received support from the crypto industry during his campaign and has promised that America would become “crypto capital of the planet.”
“We will have regulations, but from now on, the rules will be written by people who love your industry, not hate your industry,” he said during a keynote address at a Bitcoin conference at Nashville last July, according to the Associated Press.
In an interview with Investing.com, deVere Group chief executive Nigel Green said that the sale of Mr. Trump’s new token is a revival of a meme coin trend that started in 2021, where inexperienced investors got burned from their investments due to its extreme volatility.