Awaiting Trump’s return to office, the cryptocurrency industry was thrilled by the president’s promises to provide clear-cut regulatory guidelines that would help the sector grow while easing the volatility it’s become notorious for. Industry-friendly bankers ready to catch the rush of capital coming in from offshore accounts are hopeful that Trump’s crypto framework will create “a more secure environment for consumers,” as one banker told Bloomberg this weekend.
But Donald Trump also proved this weekend that cryptocurrency still offers a great opportunity to make a quick buck the old-fashioned way — by finding a greater fool who will overpay. On Friday night, he made a surprise announcement on Truth Social launching a meme coin called $TRUMP. “It’s time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING,” he wrote. Also, making money. The drop of the coin surprised even those locked-in attendees at the Crypto Ball, where high-profile crypto industry players scrambled to buy $TRUMP as it shot up in value. On Friday night, the coin had a market cap of roughly $1 billion. By Sunday morning, the coin’s fully diluted value — that is, including all the coins held by Trump and other insiders — was more than $72 billion.
It was suddenly among the 20 or 25 most valuable cryptocurrencies in the world, despite having no underlying business or use case aside from signaling support for Trump. According to the $TRUMP website, 80 percent of the meme coin is owned by a company called CIC Digital — an affiliate of the Trump Organization — and its subsidiary, Fight Fight Fight, LLC. If they were able to cash out on their shares, Trump’s percentage of the shares would have made him one of the richest men in the world. For all his real estate ventures and scammy failed businesses and meme stocks and social media ventures and unrelated previous crypto ventures, 89 percent of Trump’s net worth this weekend was derived from a meme coin.
Many others got rich quick, including Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, who boasted of making $1 million in a day. (He cashed it out and bet it on the Buffalo Bills.) Portnoy was not a true believer in any longer term thesis for the $TRUMP coin, saying that he only bought it out of FOMOOSC — “a fear of missing out on shit coins,” referring to slang for a cryptocurrency that might be headed to zero.
Soon, there was another way to cash in on crypto’s Trump mania. On Sunday afternoon, Melania Trump announced she was dropping her own coin, $MELANIA, with a market cap of more than $5 billion. (Melania’s team has reserved a more humble 35 percent of the total number of coins in circulation, which would still net her more than a billion dollars on paper.) Unfortunately for $TRUMP buyers, the $MELANIA announcement undercut their buying momentum, causing Trump’s coin quickly to lose billions in value. Portnoy, for one, couldn’t flip this for a win. He bought $500,000 worth, but ended up with a $200,000 loss, according to his X account. “Can’t win em all,” he said. “Shooters shoot.”
So can Trump actually cash out on all this speculation, which critics have called an extremely obvious and brazen conflict of interest? Like with his prior entries in the strange new world of speculative finance, that depends on how his political career is going. Just as Truth Social stock has become a way for investors to bet on (or potentially buy ) the president, $TRUMP looks like a new way to wager on the president’s performance. Beginning in April , Trump-controlled affiliates will be able to starting selling off their share of coins — 800 million coins compared to the 200 million currently in circulation —with continuing unlocks for the next three years. How much Trump and other insiders ultimately pocket will depend on what happens with the price of the coin going forward. But if the administration doesn’t live up to its crypto-booster promises or tariffs tank the economy, it could be worth the same as a lot of other meme coins that have come before it — the fun that investors had along the way. In other words, virtually nothing.
