Trump and Melania Launch Rival Memecoins, Roiling Crypto Markets

The price of the "official" Trump memecoin has surged since its Friday evening launch, breaking into the crypto top 20 by market capitalization and hitting an eye-watering $14 billion.

Donald Trump's crypto bombshell: Memes, Melania and a Mini Crossword

01/20/2025 09:02 AM EST

Updated: 01/20/2025 11:08 AM EST

Crypto markets have been rocked by the launch of an "official" Donald Trump memecoin this weekend—with traders braced for more mayhem this coming week.

The price of the "official" Trump memecoin has surged since its Friday evening launch, breaking into the crypto top 20 by market capitalization and hitting an eye-watering $14 billion.

Now, as leaks reveal Trump is readying a flurry of crypto-focused executive orders, Trump's wife Melania has launched her own rival cryptocurrency—tanking the price of Trump's coin.

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President-elect Donald Trump and his wife Melania Trump have each launched cryptocurrencies this ... [+] weekend, with the so-called memecoins rocketing in value.

"The official Melania meme is live," the incoming first lady of the U.S. posted to X, alongside a link to a website selling the cryptocurrency. "You can buy $melania now."

The price of Melania's coin surged as traders rushed to buy it, pushing it to more than $5 and giving it a fully diluted market cap of over $5 billion.

Like Trump's coin, Melania's memecoin—a type of cryptocurrency similar to bitcoin that derives value from the level of community interest and engagement—has been launched on the solana blockchain.

01/20 update: The crypto market is now braced for further cryptocurrency bombshells as Donald Trump's inauguration gets underway in Washington DC.

"Wait until you see what they do tomorrow," Trump's son Eric posted to X on Sunday, adding in a separate post that was shared by Donald Trump: "We are just getting started!"

Following the launch of Trump's memecoin, World Liberty Financial, the decentralized finance (DeFi) project launch with the support of Trump and his family last year, saw a surge in the sales of its governance token.

"I truly believe that World Liberty Financial will revolutionize DeFi/CeFi [centralized finance] and will be the future of finance," Eric Trump added.

Meanwhile, the price of Trump's memecoin has been boosted by trading app Robinhood announcing it would list the cryptocurrency on its platform.

Adding to the already sky high expectations for bitcoin and crypto on Monday, MicroStrategy chief executive Michael Saylor, who has turned his flailing software company into a bitcoin buying vehicle since 2020, posted: "Things will be different tomorrow."

Saylor's post fed expectations that Trump could announce a U.S. bitcoin reserve, an idea Trump first floated during a bitcoin conference last year during which he promised to create a national stockpile of bitcoin similar to the country's gold and oil reserves.

"This is beyond insane," analysts at The Kobeissi Letter posted to X. "Less than 48 hours ago, Donald Trump launched $trump which just erased $7.5 billion in market cap in 10 minutes. In the minutes around the launch of Melania Trump's token, we saw massive sell orders in $trump."

"Looks like crypto is becoming a family business," X influencer Mario Nawfal posted.

Following the launch of Melania's coin, Trump's memecoin crashed by around 40%, diving as traders scrambled to buy the new coin, on-chain data showed.

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Donald Trump's "official" coin has crashed after his wife Melania launch her own cryptocurrency ... [+] rival.

Early buyers of Trump's coin have seen triple-digit percentage increases since Friday evening with some traders missing out because they believed Trump's social media channels had been hacked.

The Trump family memecoin blitz comes after David Sacks, named crypto and artificial intelligence czar by Trump, declared a new age of U.S. crypto innovation.

"The reign of terror against crypto is over, and the beginning of innovation in America for crypto has just begun," Sacks said, speaking on Friday at the so-called crypto ball event, intended to drive support for Trump among the crypto community and demonstrate its value to the incoming administration.