Trump Shakes the Crypto World with His Own Memecoin $Trump

You can safely call it the craziest days in crypto history: Donald Trump, the first pro-crypto president in US history, shook up the financial and crypto world at the weekend with his own memecoin $Trump.

In what can safely be called the craziest days in crypto history, Donald Trump, the first pro-crypto president in US history, shook up the financial and crypto world at the weekend with his own memecoin $Trump.

The crypto community was initially skeptical – a hack was suspected, even Elon Musk was unsure what the coin was all about. But over the course of Saturday, it became clear: $Trump actually comes from Trump himself.

What happened next was unprecedented in the 16-year history of the highly volatile crypto industry: In the first 24 hours, the $Trump token launched on Saturday night shot up from 18 cents to as much as 33 US dollars, posting a 13,000 percent increase in value in the process. 200 million coins came into circulation immediately – Up to 800 million more tokens are planned over the next 3 years.

Anyone expecting a rapid collapse similar to the rapid “pump and dumps” that are often the order of the day with memecoins was proved wrong on Sunday: the TRUMP rally continued. Some traders made a quick fortune with the memecoin. One investor, for example, turned a disposal of 1.1 million dollars into just under 30 million dollars – a gain of 2600 percent in the first few hours. By comparison, the S&P 500 took 30 years to achieve a return of 2150 percent.

On Sunday, the $Trump memecoin doubled in value again and even peaked at 74 dollars per token, briefly reaching a market capitalization of 74 billion dollars (but only considering all coins, including those not yet tradable). At this point, the $Trump coin is one of the ten most valuable crypto-assets in the world – ahead of the best-known and most valuable memecoin to date, $Doge, and renowned cryptocurrencies such as Cardano, Chainlink, Tron and Avalanche.

In purely mathematical terms, $Trump makes the US president the richest living crypto billionaire overnight. Based on the total of 1 billion coins earmarked for issuance, $Trump's market capitalization has since reached 73 billion US dollars; it is currently just under 40 billion. 200 million of the total 1 billion coins have already been issued and are in active trading. The remaining coins held by Trump-controlled organizations can be sold gradually over the next three years, starting in April. On average, Trump's companies can bring around 24 million coins onto the market per month.

Such gains on paper have never been recorded in crypto history. Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and CEO of the crypto trading platform FTX, which went bankrupt in 2022, achieved a maximum paper profit of around 30 billion US dollars at the height of his success. Satoshi's Bitcoin wallet has accumulated around 50 billion US dollars over a period of 15 years.

But no crypto party is complete without turbulence. The launch of another memecoin – namely that of Trump's wife, caused an unexpected turn of events on Sunday night. Donald and Melania Trump announced the launch of the MELANIA coin late on Sunday evening. A full 36 hours after her husband, Melania Trump also spectacularly entered the crypto stage – and at the same time put $Trump under a lot of pressure.

Donald Trump's memecoin plummeted by more than half in the first half hour after the launch of $MELANIA, before recovering. $MELANIA, meanwhile, soared with gains of more than 15,000%, just as massively as $Trump, whose market value fell by more than 30 billion US dollars within a few minutes. $MELANIA was obviously considered a direct competitor to the TRUMP coin.

Around midday on Monday, just a few hours before the inauguration, TRUMP was at least able to recover towards the USD 50 mark, but is still well off its Sunday high of USD 75. The Melania coin, which at its peak had a market capitalization of over USD 8 billion, subsequently came under pressure for a short time, but stabilized at prices of around USD 9.

Meanwhile, the crypto market was set in motion by the launch of memecoins. Solana (SOL) initially benefited enormously: both coins are based on the popular blockchain and are driving the hype. SOL, the fourth most valuable coin in the world, climbed to a new all-time high of USD 295 in the past 48 hours, only to plummet to USD 235 within six hours shortly after the launch of $Melania. Ethereum, one of Solana's biggest competitors, came under further pressure in the short term. Bitcoin, meanwhile, rode a rollercoaster: a 5% slump to the USD 100,000 mark was followed today by a jump to new all