As unfounded rumors that U.S. president Joe Biden is dead spread across the internet, crypto degens have spun up a new batch of morbid political meme coins.
Biden Dead (BIDEAD) was created on Monday and has already reached a market cap of $660,000. Soon after that came Biden Done (BIDONE), illustrated with a cartoon of the president’s skeleton. It quickly reached a market cap of $567,000.
At the time of writing, meme coin factory Pump.fun is the breeding ground for tokens claiming that Biden is dead or that his death is imminent. In fact, of the top 10 tokens on the protocol with the word “Biden” in them, seven of them reference the president's death while an eighth celebrates him still being alive.
This rumor can be traced back to Twitter account Global Press posting that a supposed “verified source” told the outlet Biden was “unlikely to survive the night” after testing positive for COVID-19. This claim has been hit with a Twitter community note citing a letter from president’s physician stating that Biden’s vitals are completely normal. Alongside this, the Associated Press have reported that Biden’s COVID-19 symptoms have “almost resolved completely.”
Other sources, such as notorious conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, have fanned the flame bringing more attention to the Global Press and other unfounded claims.
In spite of this, degens are continuing to invest in tokens claiming that the U.S. president is dead. Interestingly, one token is predicting that he will pass “exactly at midnight” August 15.
Insanity he has lost his marbles pic.twitter.com/hrQexVStmf
— scooter (@scooterxbt) May 15, 2024
BidenDeadAugust15 (BIDEAD) was created two months ago and remained dormant until late July, when the token started to spike. The meme coin skyrocketed 615% the day that Biden dropped out from the 2024 U.S. presidential race and then a further 64% following the conspiracy theory that the president’s condition is unstable after his COVID-19 diagnosis.
But, as Global Press’ tweet has been debunked, the token has fallen 67% and back below the price it saw when Biden dropped out of the race.
Equally, Jeo Boden (BODEN), an intentionally misspelled Joe Biden meme coin on Solana, has skyrocketed 148% over the past 24 hours. However, this spike still leaves the token 98% lower than the all-time high reached in April.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.