‘Crypto president’ Donald Trump has become $28 billion richer overnight, thanks to the TRUMP meme coin, which brought a 400% increase in his estimated net worth.
At $28 per token, and with Trump-affiliated companies CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight Fight LLC controlling 80% of the supply, the value of his crypto holdings alone has soared to $22.4 billion.
For context, Forbes last valued Trump at $5.6 billion last November.
TRUMP traded at just $7 per token at launch but skyrocketed within hours, achieving a fully diluted valuation of $27 billion. This all comes less than 48 hours before Trump’s inauguration.
Only 200 million tokens are currently circulating, but there’s a plan to expand this to 1 billion over the next three years, as per the token’s official website.
The timing of the launch has drawn intense scrutiny. A US president-elect releasing a business product days before taking office is quite literally unheard of. At an unofficial crypto inaugural ball Friday night, Trump’s crypto and AI czar, David Sacks, promised that: “The reign of terror against crypto is over. Innovation in America for crypto has just begun.”
Meanwhile, crypto companies have donated over $10 million to Trump’s inauguration, after donating over $300 million to him during the campaign.
Meanwhile, Solana saw a 16% price surge in the 24 hours following the TRUMP launch on its network, hitting an intraday high of 23%.
According to data, this is Solana’s most profitable day of the year so far, despite Ethereum taking a 7% hit during the same period.
Solana has always been pitched as a “faster, cheaper,” alternative to Ethereum. The blockchain hosts a wide range of DeFi projects, and since last year, it has become the meme coin capital of the world. PEPE, WIF, PENGU, and MOTHER are just a few of the meme coins that have now made Solana invaluable to the industry.
But TRUMP is different. See, just twelve hours after launch, it became the largest meme coin on Solana. SOL has already risen 25% this year, after posting an 85% gain in 2024.
Bitwise, VanEck, 21Shares, and Canary have all submitted applications to launch exchange-traded funds (ETFs) based on SOL, with a decision deadline set for January 25. And ProShares filed late Friday for four different ETFs tied to Solana.
While the TRUMP memecoin has stolen the headline since it launched late on Friday, the Donald Trump NFT collection also quietly posted a 400% surge throughout the day on Saturday.
Crypto stakeholders were expecting regulatory clarity and more friendliness toward the industry. Nobody saw him launching a memecoin days before his inauguration.
According to reports, the incoming POTUS did not inform those in his circle of his plans to launch a memecoin. The token launch went live hours before the inaugural crypto ball hosted by Trump’s White House Czar, David Sacks.
Growing speculation that holders of Trump’s NFT cards could get allocations of the memecoin caused the collection’s floor price to surge over 400% today. The floor price surged as high as $1,000, making the trading cards one of the best-performing NFT projects in recent times.
The NFTs were sold in multiple issues, with an average price of $99 per card. With today’s rally, some holders are up by as much as 13x their buying price on the NFTs.
Investors active in the space quickly highlighted that the same company that helped launch the NFT collections, CIC Digital, is also involved with the TRUMP memecoin.
However, it appears that NFT holders will not receive any automatic allocations or airdrops.
Like Donald Trump, his memecoin evokes mixed reactions on opposite ends of the spectrum. On one hand, some crypto citizens are excited by the POTUS interacting with crypto at this level. However, the other camp is skeptical about the long-term effect of involvement with the crypto community. Already, many in his circle have made bank thanks to the series of launches linked to his name.
World Liberty Finance, the DeFi project linked to the Trump family is also closely tracked as some in the crypto space consider its transactions with projects as endorsements.
Another issue investors have noted is that Trump Group affiliates CIC Digital LLC and Fighter Fight LLC hold 80% of the token’s total supply. However, those tokens are subject to a 3-year unlocking plan, which helps to allay fears of a sudden dump on the market.
However, there are now claims the launch team has sold up to $500 million worth of the memecoin already.
Still, the memecoin continues to soar to new levels. It has already gained over $5 billion in market cap and almost $13 billion in trading volume to trade for about $29.