President-elect Donald Trump launched his own cryptocurrency on Friday, sparking a feverish buying that apparently sent its market capitalization soaring to several billion dollars.
In an article about his Social Truth and
“My NEW official Trump meme is HERE! It’s time for all of what we stand for: WIN!” he wrote.
Meme coins have no economic or transactional value and are often seen as a means of speculative trading.
“This Trump meme celebrates a leader who doesn’t back down, no matter the odds,” the official says of the article.
In the hours following the overnight launch, the crypto community posed questions about the legitimacy of the $TRUMP coin, and its actual link to the president-elect, with some fearing a scam.
But the fact that the announcements came on Trump’s official social media channels seemed to reassure the market, as did the fact that Trump has used one of the companies behind the project, CIC Digital LLC, in the past to sell non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
By mid-morning on Saturday, the market capitalization for $TRUMP stood at nearly $6 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.com.
Neither Trump nor the company managing the launch, Fight Fight Fight LLC, provided details on how much he earned from the initial batch of meme coins launched.
The currency official said two hundred million meme coins have been issued, and Fight Fight Fight said another 800 million will be added in the next 3 years.
Once a cryptocurrency skeptic, the president-elect is now a convert and has a champion of the concept.
Before this new announcement, Trump and his sons Donald Jr. and Eric launched their own cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial, and other members of the new administration have already revealed their investments and cryptocurrencies.
Last summer, Trump spoke at a Bitcoin convention in Nashville, where he pledged to make the United States “the crypto capital of the planet” when he returned to the White House.
The meme coin is Trump’s newest product campaign, which recently included a line of perfumes, colognes, watches and silver coins “President Donald J. Trump First Edition” sold for $100 to celebrate his election victory. He used a photo of himself sitting next to the first girl, Dr. S. SJill Biden, at the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral to announce the colony line.