Welcome to The Trump Crypto Era

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On Saturday morning, I awoke to very strange news.

On Friday night around 9pm EST President Trump launched a new cryptocurrency.

When Trump first posted the news on Truth Social and X.com, people thought his accounts must have been hacked. But somehow, it was real.

Trump’s new cryptocurrency is considered a memecoin. This asset class (if you can call it that) is purely speculative in nature. It’s simply a trading vehicle attached to a viral idea (meme).

The coin’s name is “Official Trump” and the ticker is TRUMP.

Trump’s token started trading at around 18 cents, but very few people got in at that price.

Big players immediately bought up tens of millions of dollars worth of tokens, and by midnight Friday the price was already over $7.

Early Saturday morning, there were fireworks. The price soared to $75 by 7am EST (I was asleep, unaware I had missed another chance at intergenerational wealth).

As I write this Tuesday morning, $TRUMP is down about 50% from its all-time high, trading around $38.

At $38, its current market cap is around $7.77 billion. There are currently 200 million TRUMP tokens in circulation, and 200 million (supply) x $38 (price) = $7.77 billion.

But the far more important metric in crypto is known as fully-diluted value (FDV). This includes the total number of authorized coins, which in this case is 999.99 million.

There will eventually be 999.99 million coins, about 80% of which will be “vested” (slowly unlocked) to Trump and other insiders over the next 3 years. So with a price of $38, the FDV of Trump’s memecoin is $38 billion.

So $38B is $TRUMP’s true, all-in “market cap”. That makes it the 25th largest crypto in the world.

The project’s insiders own approximately 80%, and you have to guess that’s mostly (or all) Trump himself. So with this single move, his family’s net worth may have expanded by as much as $30 billion (on paper).

In other words, Trump may have just 10x’d his wealth.

WHY?!

As I sipped my coffee Saturday morning, one question repeated in my brain.

Why? Why? Why would he do this?

Today the question is still echoing around my head. But I have a few guesses after much pondering.

As far as the timing goes, I suspect the deal needed to get done before his inauguration. It wouldn’t be very presidential to launch a memecoin while in office. It was probably supposed to happen earlier, but these things are complex and it probably got delayed.

As to the motivation… It’s very hard for me to understand.

I suppose you could be charitable and say that this gives Trump more defensive firepower. If anyone tries to prosecute/persecute him in the future, he could simply hire an army of the best lawyers on Earth to defend him.

Or maybe he’ll donate all the proceeds to charity. Buy some temporary housing for hurricane and wildfire victims.

Maybe he wanted to send a message on just how pro-crypto his administration will be. This certainly accomplished that.

Or maybe the opportunity was simply too tempting to pass up.

No matter the true motivation, it’s difficult for me to comprehend. Overall I’m thrilled by Trump 2.0, but this one aspect does puzzle me.

Buyer Beware

So will Trump’s memecoin continue to rise in price? It’s impossible to say.

Historically, very few memecoins have staying power. The few long-term winners include Dogecoin, PEPE, and Shiba Inu. But with Trump’s brand stronger than ever, I suppose anything is possible.

I suspect the price of TRUMP will become a new kind of approval rating. If the populace thinks he’s doing well, the price may rise. If his popularity falls, so will the price.

But there’s more to it than that. Memecoin prices tend to follow the market. That primarily means Bitcoin, but also other “altcoins”. The crypto market is highly correlated and coins tend to move in the same direction.

Overall, I would caution readers about getting involved in the memecoin/crypto space. It’s beyond volatile and risky. Unless you really know what you’re doing, exercise extreme caution.

With that said, the TRUMP coin is now listed on major exchanges such as Coinbase and Robinhood. So it is no longer hard to access. But these major listings also tended to coincide with a peak in the coin’s price.

By the time TRUMP hit mainstream exchanges like Coinbase, most of the professionals were already deeply invested and looking to dump their shares on the masses.

The crypto world is simultaneously weird, scary, and wonderful. And judging by what we’ve seen so far from Trump, it’s only going to get more prominent.

Trump’s second term marks a new era for crypto. Restrictions and regulations will be rolled back, and it appears that we have entered a “do whatever you want” type of environment.

I expect to see many thousands of copycat memecoins in the near future. All celebrities and influencers will surely be tempted to launch their own coin.

It’s going to be a weird, wacky, and potentially profitable next few years.

We’ll keep you updated as this story develops.

Disclosure: Adam Sharp does not own TRUMP or any memecoins discussed in this article. He does own Bitcoin.

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