President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump both launched Meme coins this weekend in anticipation of the inauguration.
President Trump’s coin is called $TRUMP. He announced it in a Truth Social post on Friday. Melania’s coin is called $MELANIA. It was announced on X.
A cryptocoin is valuable because it is finite. The $TRUMP coin launched with 200 million coins but will expand to 1 billion over the next three years, according to the coin’s website. It spiked in value by 300% this weekend alone.
The site says that the coins are “not intended to be, or the subject of” an investment opportunity and is “not political and has nothing to do with” any political campaign, political office or government agency. So it is more of a blockchain collectible.
This is unusual. The First Family doesn’t typically sell products to the American people but President Trump kept his businesses during his first administration so it’s less unusual for him.
Crypto experts worry that this could cheapen cryptocurrencies because it is a memecoin. According to Politico, “Memecoins — a class of crypto sometimes referred to as ‘shitcoins’ that includes digital assets with names like Dogecoin and Fartcoin — are speculative assets that are highly volatile by nature. If investors lose money on the coin, it could become a liability for both Trump and the crypto sector.”
