US President Donald Trump-linked crypto project World Liberty Financial (WLF) has raised $1 billion in token sales, while a new Trump coin has also soared to over $10 billion in value trading as Trump took office for his second term. .
WLF made the announcement Monday, the day Trump was sworn in as president.
The boom in Trump-linked crypto projects comes as he promises to usher in a “golden age” for cryptocurrencies, in stark contrast to the regulatory scrutiny of the industry imposed under the Trump administration. former President Joe Biden.
The WLF, promoted and formed by Trump, his sons and Trump’s new special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, was launched two months before the US elections.
Trump’s new meme coin, dubbed $TRUMP, launched Friday evening at the first-ever Crypto Ball in Washington, DC, in conjunction with the inauguration festivities. The coin surged on Monday, rising from less than $10 on Saturday morning to $74.59 before giving up some of its huge rise.
The new coin expanded Trump’s cryptocurrency interests beyond WLF.
Melania Trump launched her own play, $MELANIA, on Sunday. Its rally pushed its market capitalization well past $1 billion.
Four-fifths of Trump coin’s tokens are owned by CIC Digital, a subsidiary of Trump’s company, and another entity called Fight, Fight, Fight, according to its website. It states that the coins are “an expression of support and commitment to the ideals and beliefs embodied in the ‘$TRUMP’ symbol” and are not an investment or security.
The launch of the WLF, just two months before the US elections in November, sparked concerns over ethics and conflicts of interest. The meme coin’s launch Friday evening also raised red flags, even among those in the cryptocurrency industry.
“While it is tempting to dismiss this as simply a Trump spectacle, the launch of the official Trump token opens a Pandora’s box of ethical and regulatory questions,” said Justin D’Anethan, an independent crypto analyst based in Hong Kong. Kong.
Cryptocurrency lawyer Preston Byrne published a blog post on Sunday predicting a civil lawsuit against the coin.
“Someone will lose money, a lawyer will come up with a theory and a case,” Byrne wrote. “The launch of memecoin is, from a purely political point of view, a huge unforced error.”
Byrne declined to comment further.
“President of Cryptography”
The Trump Organization said this month that the president would hand over day-to-day management of his multibillion-dollar real estate, hotel, golf, media and licensing portfolio to his children upon entering the White House.
As of 2:45 p.m. EST (7:45 p.m. GMT), Trump’s coin was trading at $42.20, giving it a market capitalization of about $8.5 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.
The 24-hour trading volume was nearly $40 billion, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
WLF sold nearly 22 billion tokens on Monday, according to the company’s website, surpassing its initial goals.
This includes a total investment of $75 million from Tron founder Justin Sun, who has been accused of crypto-related fraud and securities violations under the Biden administration.
Excitement over so-called meme coins has contributed to a broader rally in cryptocurrency prices, with traders and investors increasingly hopeful that Trump would fulfill his promise to be a “crypto president” by easing restrictions. regulations and promoting ownership of digital assets.
Several key figures in the Trump administration and its circles have ties to the crypto industry.
Bitcoin hit $104,031 on its inauguration day and has surged nearly 7% so far this month.
The Trump and Melania cryptocurrencies were created on the lesser-known Solana blockchain, which CoinMarketCap ranks as the third largest blockchain network.
The price of Solana coin also increased over the weekend, reaching an all-time high of $294.33 on Sunday.
“The cryptocurrency market has gained popularity in recent hours due to the launch of the TRUMP and MELANIA cryptocurrencies just before the inauguration,” Grzegorz Drozdz, market analyst at Conotoxia Ltd, said in a statement.
Blur the lines
Peter Schiff, chief economist and global strategist at Euro Pacific Asset Management, highlighted the rise in the value of $TRUMP and called it the new digital gold, on social media.
Trump’s net worth is estimated by Forbes to be $6.7 billion. This does not include the value, at least on paper, of the $TRUMP coin or its earnings from WLF.
The prospect of looser regulation around crypto policy was greeted with fanfare by the industry and spurred a Bitcoin rally following Trump’s election victory in November.
The huge rise in prices for the new coins has raised concerns among some analysts.
“Meme cryptocurrencies, like these, are subject to large fluctuations and we generally view them as speculative assets,” said Conotoxia’s Drozdz.
Trump’s coin represents a blending of the world of decentralized finance into the political arena, but it also “blurs the lines between governance, profit and influence,” said D’Anethan, the crypto analyst in Hong Kong.
“Should public figures, especially those with such political clout, exert this kind of influence over speculative markets? This is a question that regulators are unlikely to ignore,” he said.
The Trump and Melania Trump Coins websites avoid calling them cryptocurrencies, instead using the phrase “fungible crypto assets” in their FAQs.
On Sunday, Donald Trump Jr posted on X that $TRUMP coin is the “world’s hottest digital meme” and that WLF would be “the future of finance.”
“We’re just getting started,” he said.
