President Trump and Melania launch meme-coins

President Donald Trump launched a new cryptocurrency as he began his second term in office. The new $Trump meme coin's value soared to billions of dollars ($12bn/£9.8bn) within days of its launch.

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump have both launched their own meme-coins, with the former president’s $Trump coin surging to billions of dollars within days.

According to the CoinMarketCap website, the new $Trump meme coin was launched from Trump Organization affiliate CIC Digital LLC. The new coin soared to around $12bn (£9.8bn) in value within a few days of its launch.

Meanwhile, Melania Trump’s $Melania meme-coin stands at around $1.7bn, as per the website.

Trump has previously called cryptocurrency a “scam,” but during the 2024 Presidential election campaign, his family launched a cryptocurrency company called World Liberty Financial.

The new Trump coin was launched from Trump Organization affiliate CIC Digital LLC, which is linked to previous sales of crypto collectable NFTs launched in 2022 that made millions of dollars but have since fallen dramatically in value for their owners.

Earlier this week, Google increased its stake in OpenAI rival Anthropic with an additional $1bn investment in the AI firm.

The search engine giant has already invested $2bn in Anthropic, but reports from the Financial Times claim the Alphabet-owned firm has taken an even bigger stake in the company behind the Claude family of AI models.

Other investors, including the likes of venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners, are also set to invest up to $2bn in Anthropic, which will take the firm’s valuation to over $60bn.

Other Anthropic backers include Amazon, which has ploughed more than $8bn into the AI startup.

General Motors has reached a settlement with US regulators that will prevent the US car-making giant from selling its customer information without their knowledge for the next twenty years.

The Federal Trade Commission slapped GM with a five-year total ban on reporting data, even with customer consent, after it was found to have shared driver behaviour data with insurance companies without the customer’s consent.

GM’s Smart Driver program was an opt-in service that collected data on aspects such as chosen traffic routes. However, a New York Times investigation revealed that the car firm was also collecting data on the rate of acceleration, cornering speeds, and other driver behaviour that is of particular value to insurers in assessing the risk posed by policyholders.

“With this action, the FTC is safeguarding Americans’ privacy and protecting people from unchecked surveillance,” outgoing FTC chair Lina Khan said in a statement on Thursday.

GM was found to have harvested driver data for sale through Smart Driver as often as every three seconds, which was not disclosed to GM’s customers. GM discontinued the feature last year.

“Respecting our customers’ privacy and earning their trust is deeply important to us,” GM said in a statement on Thursday. “We’re more committed than ever to making our policies and controls clear and accessible.”

Social media users, especially in the US, found they were unable to access the content after searching “Democrats,” but no such error appeared when searching for “Republicans,” leading to accusations against the platform.

The issue emerged as Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg appeared alongside other tech moguls at President Trump’s inauguration.

Meta has denied that the problem was politically motivated, claiming instead that it was a technical problem that impacted several hashtags. The social media giant said it was working to fix the issues urgently.