Trump promised to be a “crypto president,” and he fulfilled his promise before he was even president. The coin he flipped with his wife over the weekend went from 10 to 67 dollars in 2 days. Economists are worried.
Launched on Friday, Trump’s “meme coin”, also known as $TRUMP, rose from less than 10 dollars (€9.61) on Saturday morning to $74.59 (€71.71), before losing part of its huge increase on Monday, advances to .
According to the news agency, the currency had already reached a market value of 10 billion dollars (almost 10 billion euros).
But the “meme coin” also launched by Melania Trump, his wife, called $MELANIA, ended up being accompanied by a sharp drop of 38% in the value of Trump’s.
Melania launched her cryptocurrency on Sunday, but it soon reached a market capitalization of 6.14 billion dollars (5.90 billion euros) in just two hours, according to .
Four-fifths of the tokens are owned by CIC Digital, an affiliate of Trump’s company, and another entity called Fight, Fight, Fight, as described in the cryptocurrency of the US president who takes office this Monday, and which has promised to be one “crypto president”.
But what currency is this? “It’s Literally A Meme Coin. No Use. No Script. No promises. No Expectation of Financial Return. Just 100% Memes”, reads the website. Still, that didn’t stop thousands of people from buying a $TRUMP or a $MELANIA. So far, they have been issued 200 million of these coins.
A “meme coin” is a type of cryptocurrency inspired by trends like Internet memes, with no inherent utility, describes .
The “girl” meme coin, for example, fell 95% shortly after its launch last month.
“While it is tempting to dismiss this as just another Trump show, the launch of the official Trump token opens a Pandora’s box of ethical and regulatory issues,” said Justin D’Anethancrypto analyst.
“Meme cryptocurrencies, like these, are prone to large fluctuations and we generally consider them speculative assets”, also guarantees the analyst Grzegorz Drozdz.
“This is a revival of the trend of the meme coins we saw in 2021 and 2022, when many young and inexperienced investors were burned by extreme volatility”, also says another analyst, Nigel Green.
According to , meme coins, which already existed, have no economic or transactional value and are often seen as a means of speculative trade.
“If people want to play, I really don’t care”, comments the economist Lee Reiners. “What interests me is that when this cryptocurrency bubble bursts — and will explode — it will end up having an impact on people across the economy, even if they do not have direct investment in cryptocurrencies. AND This new currency is making the situation worse.”
