Image credit: Ivan Babydov/Pexels
As Donald Trump is sworn into power as President of the United States on Monday, the first couple each have also launched their own cryptocurrencies.
In November it had been reported that Donald Trump’s social media company (Trump Media and Technology Group or TMTG)) had been in advanced talks to buy Bakkt, a cryptocurrency trading platform majority-owned by International Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange.
That deal so far has not materialised, but now President-elect Donald Trump has launched the $Trump cryptocurrency. This was followed shortly after by incoming first lady Melania Trump launching her own cryptocurrency known as $Melania.
The meme coin launched by President-elect Donald Trump was launched on Friday.
Trump had announced the launch of $Trump, in a Truth Social post late Friday.
“My NEW Official Trump Meme is HERE!” he posted. “It’s time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING! Join my very special Trump Community. GET YOUR $TRUMP NOW. Go to gettrumpmemes.com/ — Have Fun!”
Shortly after it launch, the price of $Trump surged by more than 300 percent.
The digital asset hovered at just over $46 as of 5:25pm EST Sunday, with a market cap of $9.36 billion, according to CoinMarketCap, after hitting a peak of $15 billion earlier on Sunday.
Then on Sunday, Trump’s wife also announced her own meme coin.
“The Official Melania Meme is live! You can buy $Melania now,” she tweeted on the social platform X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday.
The website for the ‘Official Melania Meme‘, indicates it is a crypto asset created and tracked on the Solana blockchain.
Melania memes are digital collectibles intended to function as an expression of support for and engagement with the values embodied by the symbol Melania, it stated.
According to CoinMarketCap, $Melania (which has a market cap of $1.64bn), has fluctuated and is currently valued around $8.55.
Disclaimers on the websites of both the $Trump and $Melania coins said they were “not intended to be, or the subject of” an investment opportunity or a security.
Donald Trump’s backing of cryptocurrencies comes after he had previously labelled crypto a “scam.”
However during the 2024 election campaign, Trump became the first presidential candidate to accept digital assets as donations.
Trump then also stated he would create a strategic Bitcoin stockpile and appoint financial regulators that take a more positive stance towards digital assets.
That spurred expectations that he will strip back regulations on the crypto industry, and the price of Bitcoin surged over $100,000 as a result of his election victory.
Bitcoin is currently trading at around $107,000,
The new administration’s positive attitude to crypto, stands in marked contrast to that of the Biden administration.
Gary Gensler, who stepped down as the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday, earlier this month had warned that the crypto industry is “rife with bad actors”.
“But in this (crypto) field, it is rife with bad actors,” the SEC’s Gensler stated. “And let me just split the field for a minute. The public knows a lot about Bitcoin which is depending upon its market value on any given day, is two thirds to 80 percent of market value of crypto.”
“And then there is everything else. Or some people say Bitcoin and Etherium and everything else,” said Gensler. “These 10 or 15,000 projects they’re raising money from the public, and the public’s investing, or the public is investing hoping for a better future.”
“I’ve been around finance for over four decades and everything in the markets trade on a mixture of fundamentals and sentiment. At any given time, I’ve never seen a field that’s so much wrapped up in sentiment and not so much about fundamentals,” said Gensler.
“And these 10,000 to 15,00 projects, many of them will not survive,” cautioned Gensler. “They’re like venture capital investments. They’re not going to survive. But there are also a fair number of small pump and dump schemes and other things in the US.”
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