Trump coin takes market by storm

The US president-elect’s official meme token has skyrocketed to over $36 billion market capitalization within 24 hours

The new Trump crypto coin exploded in value overnight, surging by a staggering 19,000% from its opening price, data from cryptocurrency trackers showed on Sunday.

The token’s launch was announced by President-elect Donald Trump early Saturday in posts on Truth Social and X, where he promoted it by asking users to join his “Trump community.”

Known as a meme coin – a digital token with no intrinsic real-world value – the token started trading at an opening price of $0.1824 early Saturday.

By 06:00 GMT on Sunday, the price reached $36.6, giving it a fully diluted market capitalization of $36 billion, according to data from Dexscreener. Trading volume has so far surpassed $14 billion.

Trump’s company, CIC Digital LLC, owns 80% of the coin’s supply, with 200 million tokens currently in circulation and plans to expand to 1 billion over the next three years, according to the project’s website.

Trump’s son Eric praised the coin’s success, posting on X: “I am extremely proud of what we continue to accomplish in crypto. $Trump is currently the hottest digital meme on earth.”

However, Trump’s decision to launch a cryptocurrency just days before his inauguration has drawn criticism from ethics watchdogs.

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“It is absolutely wild,” Jordan Libowitz, the vice president for communications at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, stated.

“After decades of seeing presidents-elect spend the time leading up to inauguration separating themselves from their finances to show that they don’t have any conflicts of interest, we now have a president-elect who, the weekend before inauguration, is launching new businesses along with promises to deregulate… those sectors in a way to just blatantly profit off his own presidency,” he said.

Trump’s meme coin debut has raised questions about its potential impact on his incoming administration’s crypto policies. Crypto firms have already contributed at least $10 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, with many executives expected to attend his swearing-in on Monday.