Ahead of today's presidential inauguration, incoming first couple Donald and Melania Trump launched a pair of meme coins that are already worth billions of dollars in market cap. Both coins are trading on the Solana blockchain.
On Friday, Donald Trump launched $TRUMP coin, which skyrocketed over the weekend and was trading at more than $75 by Sunday afternoon. The coin now trades around $48 at the time of writing this, representing a market cap of over $10B. There are 200M $TRUMP currently available, which will grow to a total of 1B $TRUMP over three years.
The coin's website says the meme coin is not politically affiliated, however, 80% of its supply is held by Trump Organization-affiliate CIC Digital and Fight Fight Fight LLC, which are both subject to a three-year unlocking schedule – so they cannot sell all of their holdings at once.
Two days later, Melania Trump launched her coin $MELANIA, which spiked to around $12 a day later, and currently trades for around $7.50 each, representing a market cap of $7.6B. Melania's coin launch announcement initially sent $TRUMP coin nosediving to $40, but it has since slightly recovered.
$TRUMP is the first cryptocurrency endorsed by the incoming president (or any President for that matter), who once trashed Bitcoin as “based on thin air.” However Trump has since changed his tune on crypto and promised during the election to make America the “crypto capital of the planet.”
$TRUMP coin was announced on Friday, the final business day before the resignation of Gary Gensler, the outgoing chairman of the SEC who strongly opposes the crypto industry.
Anthony Scaramucci, a former Trump official turned critic, said in a post on X:
“Most dangerous thing for country about Trump coin is what comes next. 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.”
Coinbase and Binance announced that they plan to open trading for $TRUMP coin in the near future, and the coin is already available on exchanges including Robinhood, Bitget, KuCoin, and Kraken. Several crypto developers criticized these exchanges for introducing $TRUMP coin so quickly to their platforms, while other reputable coin projects with actual utility have been waiting years for approval.
Redditors were quick to point out that the $TRUMP trading chart vaguely looks like a profile of Donald Trump himself.