Author: Liam
Trump, the first crypto president elected in the United States, is setting an example to show the world how MemeCoin can rewrite the rules of the world's capital markets.
On January 18, two days before his inauguration, Trump shocked the world by unveiling his own “official” Memecoin, TRUMP, on his Truth Social and X accounts.
Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social: "My new official Trump emoji pack is here! It's time to celebrate everything we stand for: victory! Join my special Trump community. Come get your Trump emoji pack now."
At first, the crypto community questioned the legitimacy of the token. Some warned that it could be a hack or social engineering scheme. In fact, even Elon Musk wasn’t sure if Trump’s X account had been hacked. However, as Trump’s posts remained online and data from Polymarket showed there was only a 10% chance that the account was compromised, the doubts began to fade and the token’s price continued to rise.
TRUMP opened at $0.1824 but gained more than 15,000% in 12 hours and was trading around $30 as of 10 a.m. ET, 12 hours after the token was issued.
In the 12 hours since its launch, the market value of the MemeCoin project has soared to $30 billion, about three times the market value of Trump Media Technology Group DJT (about $8.7 billion). This is an exponential growth process, with its market value rising by $1 billion every few minutes.
According to estimates by blockchain analysis platform Arkham Intelligence, "Crypto President" Trump's net worth skyrocketed to $28 billion overnight, thanks to the virtual currency "TRUMP" issued by Trump, which increased his estimated net worth by 400%. Trump's affiliated companies CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight Fight LLC control 80% of the supply, and the value of his cryptocurrency holdings alone has soared to $22.4 billion. Forbes valued Trump's net worth at $5.6 billion last November.
An industry investor said that because of cryptocurrencies, Trump and his family made more money in the past 12 hours than they did in the past 50 years. This may explain why he is so supportive of cryptocurrencies? The price of cryptocurrencies has not been taken into account. Under Trump's leadership, the price of cryptocurrencies will continue to rise.
"80% of the token supply is locked in a multi-signature wallet, worth $3 billion, controlled by the creator, who has also added $40 million in liquidity," Conor Grogan, Coinbase's head of product business operations, said in an article published on X. He added that the project received millions of dollars in seed funding from Binance and Gate, two exchanges that do not serve U.S. customers. Other analysts have pointed out that 80% of the token's circulating supply is allocated to Fight Fight Fight LLC and CIC Digital LLC, which are associated with the Trump Organization, and only 20% of the supply is evenly distributed between public investors and liquidity.
While Trump controls the vast majority of tokens, they remain locked, meaning the U.S. president is unlikely to “rip off” his millions of most loyal fans… at least for now.
Additionally, while the memecoin associated with Solana pushed Solana’s market cap to a record $118 billion, the price of Ethereum, a major source of liquidity, saw an offsetting decline, with its market cap falling 5% overnight, losing about $240 billion in value.
Trump's comments come as the president-elect continues to support cryptocurrency initiatives. He was outspoken about his skepticism of cryptocurrencies, but did a 180-degree turn during the campaign, promising to reshape the U.S. cryptocurrency landscape and make the U.S. the "crypto capital of the world." Trump nominated Paul Atkins to serve as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), who is expected to lead these efforts. Atkins, a well-known cryptocurrency advocate and former SEC commissioner, will replace Gary Gensler, who has been criticized for cracking down on the industry.
Finally, while many are excited to join the biggest momentum trade of all time, which has even overshadowed social media phenomena like Gamestop and AMC, some like Bloomberg ETF’s senior analyst are skeptical, arguing that this particular attempt by Trump “seems exploitative” and is “an unforced mistake that’s happening.”
Whether he is right or wrong depends on how long it takes for this bubble to burst.
Putting aside the bubble theory, we will think about the significance of the first "presidential currency issuance" moment in world history?
Global macro investor Raoul Pal said that the signal here is the speed and simplicity of capital formation. The previous MemeCoin and ICO were just test cases, and the real capital game has not yet arrived, which will completely change the capital market.
Jeff Dorman, former Citigroup and current digital asset investment officer, believes that the market has lost its rational understanding of $Trump and completely missed the rise.
First, he said, potential token issuers and investors in the United States have been concerned about "regulatory issues" for more than three years. Now, when the president himself is both an issuer and an investor, such concerns can be completely eliminated.
Now, the president’s issuance of Memecoin does not mean that the world will only pay attention to memecoin. Trump validated the technology but only introduced a single use case for the technology. Potential issuers and investors can go beyond this limited use case.
The dot-com boom started with “dot-com companies”, companies that existed only because the internet existed. Most of them failed. The internet grew when non-internet-native companies started using the internet. Now, every company is a “dot-com company”. Walmart, Domino’s, JPMorgan Chase, etc. are now “dot-com companies”.
The TRUMP Token demonstrates to every company, municipality, university, and personal brand that cryptocurrencies can now serve as a capital formation and customer onboarding mechanism. New York City will issue a token, Harvard will issue a token, Netflix will issue a token.
We are now officially leaving the “dot-crypto” phase of blockchain. All existing use cases for cryptocurrencies come from crypto-native companies, but in the future, the world will come up with innovative ways to use tokens.
When this happens, many currently useless tokens and projects will die, but the biggest and best projects will thrive with the support of millions of new investors, issuers, and users.
In Jeff Dorman's view, if you are an investment banker, you have to start selling token ideas to your clients.
Now. The immediate price action on Friday night suggests that crypto is now a joke and the only winner will be the blockchain that issues the joke coin ($SOL). But this is short-sighted and the weekend illiquidity is more of a factor than anything else.
Anyone calling this the "cycle top" has lost their minds. PTSD is real, and all of you are so damaged by 2022 that you can't imagine what's to come in the crypto-friendly environment that is to come.
Jeff Dorman concluded by saying, So, to sum up - while I personally don’t care much about memecoins or TRUMP tokens, I care very much about the future application scenarios of blockchain. And the President of the United States has just given the green light to all future possibilities.
