Donald Trump meme coin price tanks after wife Melania also launches token
submitted by
MicroWave@lemmy.world

www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/20/dona…
Summary
Donald Trump’s meme cryptocurrency, $Trump, surged to a $14 billion market cap after launch but fell by over 50% after Melania Trump introduced her own token, $Melania, diverting investor interest.
$Trump partially recovered to $64 while $Melania reached a $13 billion valuation.
The tokens, marketed by Trump-controlled companies, sparked debate over their speculative nature, market volatility, and potential conflicts of interest.
Trump’s pro-crypto stance and promised deregulation have boosted digital currencies, though critics question the ethics of profiting from political office.
I’m just glad I bought all the trump NFTs.
Wide open grifting.
It's hilariously corrupt and outright sad, but mostly just frustrating. I don't have any sympathy for those who put money in to such obvious obvious bootlicking scam. Yet at least from Trumps perspective it's gonna work, it's guaranteed free money with no risk or consequences.
And that's just how this administration STARTS.
Far more concerning is the fact that anybody (or country, company, etc) on the planet with enough money can now directly bribe the us president through crypto
Hilariously corrupt, sad, and frustrating is how I would describe everything he does.
I have a bit of bitcoin FOMO. Whether these coins crash in a week, or a year, BTC is probably going to keep hitting all time highs, due to the fact that it's the major on-ramp to a lot of meme coins.
I miss when crypto's purpose was to buy exotic drugs from strange corners of the internet.
What's wild is I've seen vendors go from onion only, to telegram, to full on clearnet pages just with a coin wallet now.
I bought the first solid state drive I ever owned with about .7 BTC I mined on my GPU years ago, well before it blew up and when there was still a hope of it being a legitimate alternative currency. Now it’s just gambling.
I got a Galaxy S4 with my .5 BTC, I'm guessing around the same time.
The Galaxy S4 was such a good phone. I rocked that thing for almost 5 years. I was bummed that my next phone (Galaxy S8) didn't have the IR blaster so I could use it as a universal remote.
We're closing in to the maximum onion horizon.
"critics question the ethics of profiting from political office." Jesus christ. Have they never seen Trump before? Like wondering if water is wet.
The Onion singularity is happening in my lifetime!
Just morons. This is the era of the complete sucker.
Grifting as a day job. Goddamn who are the morons buying this shit and propping up this thievery.
I was curious what the official supposed purpose of these tokens was, since i have a hard time believing anyone would seriously see themselves buying anything with these at any point. The official website is hilarious. They're not claiming any purpose at all, you're just buying an "official meme":
The grift is fully out in the open I guess.
The new NFT. Buy this all but useless image.
Um, ackshually, these tokens are not NFTs, because NFTs are non-fungible, and these are fungible tokens. Still equally useless, though.
Same idiots that voted for him
Exactly and in their eyes, that moron can do no wrong. Half of them think he is the second coming of Christ.
Part of me thinks some of these people know what they are doing. But they've heard people say Trump isn't a billionaire that rather than admit they are wrong about him and hes actually a terrible business man, they can just make him into a billionaire and save face.
I have a feeling it’s no different than supporting televangelists. People trying to vicariously buy their fake jesus a victory, and buy their way to heaven by doing so.
Partly, some of the same morons who voted him in. Mostly, a foreign government that starts with R and ends with ussia.
Multiple consecutive legendary pump & dump schemes.
Does this mean $Melania is worth more than $Trump? There'll be ketchup on the walls of the Whitehouse today!
Smells and strumpets
He's going to pressure rich people to invest in his scam coin using his presidential powerers to actually keep it afloat.
Right wingers have consistently railed against politicians who make money while in office. While I completely agree that making decisions that directly or indirectly affect politicians business or other investments is unethical I know the right wing echo chamber will declare this a good thing for America. I already see political commentators and others with a voice using caution out of fear of Trump retaliation. They all but call him dear leader. I won't be surprised if Trump is the richest person in the world by the end of his term. That is, if there is an end.
I worked in a place during the 2016 election with a lot of old-school Conservatives who hadn't fully drunk the MAGA kool-aid yet, but did loathe Hillary with a passion. I vividly remember one of them explaining all of the meticulous research he claimed he did to go through the financial records Hillary released that prove that she was making all sorts of crooked money through speaking fees. When I pointed out that we didn't even know where all Trump's money came from because he didn't release his taxes, he replied "That's OK, I trust him".
It will always be "rules for thee, not for me" with these folks. When the opposition looks like it is making any money at all it immediately looks suspect, but when their side does it it's just capitalism.
He isn't going to pressure anyone. This is a path to legal bribery. The blockchain can be used to verify which wallets bought coins and if you decide to prove to Team Trump that you have invested millions in his wealth you will have influence. This is especially important for foreign donations.
Both of these are about bribing Trump.
And we'll be on a path toward economic depression within two years of him being gone.
The crypto will be how the bribe money is funnelled. Just like all the tech bros going to "service the Donvict" at Mara Lago and then paying their fee for the inauguration, that's just so he doesn't go after them.
Plain and simple it's the new way to pay bribes.
“A fool and their money are soon parted”
I'm constantly surprised that those fools haven't run out of money yet.
They should create a crypto calles $Jesus .
They already do, you can buy 15M $JESUS for $1.
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/jesus-toys/
What even goes into making/marketing these coins?
Solana has a HOWTO on making a new token here:
https://solana.com/developers/guides/getstarted/how-to-create-a-token
It requires some knowledge, but not really that much. Also note there are further FAQs in the bottom on other topics.
Anyone can create any arbitrary token. At the start they are all worthless. But there are ways to provide liquidity to exchanges and then use that liquidity to open a market. There is a Medium post here outlining one way to do it:
https://medium.com/@solanatokennet/how-to-create-and-launch-a-meme-coin-in-less-than-0-35-sol-6d265dba9b15
From there, the marketing part of it is like any other pump and dump scheme. Associate it with some pop culture figure, create a fan base willing to pay for anything associated with it, milk them to get the price up, then dump all the coins you have been keeping for yourself directly into the market, absorbing all the demand and leaving everyone with worthless numbers on the Solana Blockchain.
(It is important to note that it is only this easy for tokens that are implemented on existing Blockchains, using Smart Contracts. The Blockchains themselves are not so easy to establish. Anyone can start their own Blockchain project but they have to get other people involved in their project to get any momentum. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, even Dogecoin all have their own Blockchains whose history can't simply be copied just because their code can be used to start up a new one.)
It should be noted that many new tokens, NFTs, etc, will openly advertise that they are pump and dumps. They will literally recruit people to buy in under the pretense that they are going to win big as part of the dump, only for them to discover that they are actually going to be the bag holders.
Before crypto they used to just do regular pyramid schemes.
Bad things happening to bad people? Works for me.
Bad things? Launches crypto, gains a ton of money, crypto crashes, keeps money.
Bad? Trump's coin went to $75 for a total value of $14 billion, of which he owns 80%. Melania's release dropped Trump's by 50%, so down to only $7 billion... Only $7 billion... briefly. The article states that his coin recovered to $64 or, I'm estimating here, around $12 billion total value. Her coin topped at $13 billion total value which, again, he owns 80% of through his companies. That means off these two scams, he raked in 80% of $25 billion dollars. That's around $20 billions dollars in value.
This is, in your opinion, a bad thing?