Trump’s new meme coin and crypto token soar on his first day in office donald trump news
World Liberty Financial (WLF), the crypto project associated with United States President Donald Trump, has raised $1 billion in a token sale while also raising the market cap of a new Trump meme coin as Trump takes office for a second term. has exceeded $10 billion. ,
WLF made the announcement on Monday, the day Trump was sworn in as president.
The surge in Trump-related crypto ventures comes as he promised to bring about a “golden age” for cryptocurrencies, a sharp contrast to the regulatory scrutiny of the industry implemented under former President Joe Biden’s administration.
The WLF, promoted and formed by Trump, his sons and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s new special envoy to the Middle East, was launched two months before the US election.
Trump’s new meme coin, branded $TRUMP, was launched Friday night during the first-ever Crypto Ball in Washington, DC, in conjunction with inauguration festivities. The coin rose from less than $10 on Saturday morning to a high of $74.59 on Monday, followed by some massive gains.
The new coin expands Trump’s cryptocurrency interests beyond WLF.
Melania Trump launched her coin $MELANIA on Sunday. Its rally pushed its market capitalization past $1 billion.
According to its website, four-fifths of Trump Coin is owned by Trump’s business affiliate CIC Digital and another entity called Fight, Fight, Fight. It says the coins are “an expression of support for and engagement with the ideals and beliefs embodied by the ‘$TRUMP’ symbol” and are not an investment or security.
The WLF’s launch just two months before the November US elections raised concerns over ethics and conflicts of interest. The launch of the meme coin on Friday night raised red flags in the cryptocurrency industry, too.
Justin D’Anethan, an independent crypto analyst based in Hong Kong, said, “While it is tempting to dismiss this as just another Trump spectacle, the launch of the official Trump token has opened a Pandora’s box of ethical and regulatory questions.”
Cryptocurrency lawyer Preston Byrne published a blog post on Sunday predicting a civil lawsuit against the coin.
“Someone’s going to lose money, some lawyer will come up with a theory and a file,” Byrne wrote. “The memecoin launch is, from a purely political perspective, a huge unforced error.”
Byrne declined to comment further.
‘Crypto President’
The Trump Organization said this month that the president will hand over day-to-day management of his billion-dollar real estate, hotel, golf, media and licensing portfolio to his children once he enters the White House.
As of 2:45 p.m. EST (19:45 GMT), Trump Coin was trading at $42.20, giving it a market cap of about $8.5 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.
CoinMarketCap data shows that 24-hour trading volume was almost $40bn.
According to the company’s website, WLF sold approximately 22 billion tokens on Monday, exceeding its original targets.
This includes investments totaling $75 million from Tron founder Justin Sun, who was charged with crypto-related fraud and securities violations during the Biden administration.
The excitement over so-called meme coins helped fuel a broad rally in cryptocurrency prices, as traders and investors grew more hopeful that Trump would keep his promise to become the “crypto president” by loosening regulations and promoting ownership of digital assets. .
Many prominent figures in Trump’s administration and his circles have ties to the crypto industry.
Bitcoin reached $104,031 on the opening day and is up nearly 7 percent so far this month.
The Trump and Melania cryptocurrencies were built on the lesser-known Solana blockchain, which CoinMarketCap ranks as the third-largest blockchain network.
The Solana coin price also rose over the weekend, reaching an all-time high of $294.33 on Sunday.
“The cryptocurrency market has gained additional popularity in recent hours due to the launch of the Trump and Melania cryptocurrency just ahead of the inauguration,” Grzegorz Drozdz, market analyst at Konotoxia Ltd., said in a statement.
blurring the lines
Peter Schiff, chief economist and global strategist at Euro Pacific Asset Management, pointed to the surge in $TRUMP’s value on social media and called it the new digital gold.
According to Forbes, Trump’s net worth is estimated at $6.7 billion. This does not include the value of the $TRUMP coin or its earnings from the WLF, at least on paper.
The prospect of relaxed regulations around crypto policy has been greeted with fanfare by the industry and Bitcoin has surged following Trump’s election victory in November.
The huge increase in prices of the new coin has raised concerns among some analysts.
“Meme cryptocurrencies like these are prone to large fluctuations and we generally consider them speculative assets,” said Drozdze at Konotoxia.
Trump’s coin represents a mix of the world of decentralized finance with the political sphere, but it “blurs the lines between governance, profit and influence,” said D’Anethon, a crypto analyst in Hong Kong.
“Should public figures, especially those with such political clout, have this kind of influence in speculative markets? “This is a question that regulators are unlikely to ignore,” he said.
The websites of both Trump and Melania Trump’s coins avoid referring to them as cryptocurrencies, instead using the phrase “fungible crypto assets” in their FAQs.
On Sunday, Donald Trump Jr. posted on Twitter that the $TRUMP coin is “the most popular digital meme on Earth” and that WLF will be “the future of finance.”
“We’re just getting started,” he said.
