President Donald Trump addresses the Official Trump (TRUMP) meme coin launch.
Over the weekend, President Donald Trump got tongues wagging with the surprise launch of a Solana-based meme coin, Official Trump (TRUMP), just days before his inauguration. Recently, the president has addressed the project in person for the first time.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, January 21, after a meeting with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Oracle CTO Larry Ellison over Stargate, a $500 billion AI joint venture, Trump admitted to launching the meme coin, though he claimed not to know much about its performance.
“I don’t know where it is. I don’t know much about it other than I launched it. I heard it was very successful; I haven’t checked,” the president told reporters when asked about the project.
When the reporter informed him that the meme coin had fetched him billions of dollars in the past few days, at least on paper, the president brushed it off as “peanuts” for Son, Altman, and Ellison.
The Most Successful Meme Coin Launch Ever
Over the weekend, TRUMP became the most successful meme coin launch ever. In days, its market cap quickly eclipsed $13 billion, buoyed by the unprecedented rapid support of several crypto exchanges and trading platforms, including Robinhood, which has been historically picky about the assets it supports.
A notable fallout of this success is that it, on paper, pushes Trump significantly higher on the world’s wealthiest persons list as an entity he controls lays claim to 80% of the token supply, 800 million TRUMP.
This stash is currently worth $34.4 billion at current prices of roughly $43 per coin, though it is locked for a three-year vesting period, allowing him to access and potentially sell an average of 24 million tokens per month, currently worth $1.08 billion.
The meme coin, meanwhile, has received flak from within and outside the crypto community over ethical concerns. Still, this did not stop First Lady Melania Trump from launching her own meme coin, Official Melania Meme (MELANIA), just days later to similar success.
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