Meme coins have officially entered the halls of power.
Just a day before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 47th U.S. President, he and his wife, First Lady Melania Trump, have dropped their meme coins, Official Trump ($TRUMP) and Melania Meme ($MELANIA), sparking a frenzy of reactions on Crypto Twitter.
$TRUMP climbed to a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of $72 billion while $MELANIA surged over 12,000% within hours of the launch, per DexScreener data.
However, the meme coin debuts siphoned liquidity from the broader crypto market, leaving Bitcoin (BTC) steady and altcoins struggling to recover.
Official Trump Solana Meme Coin Triples in Price Amid Binance, Coinbase Listings
Donald Trump's official meme coin, TRUMP, nearly tripled in price from Saturday evening to early Sunday, blasting above $73 amid increasing momentum as major centralized exchanges shared plans to list the Solana token. Though the price surge has since cooled and TRUMP has retraced to a current mark of about $59, it peaked at a price of $73.43 early Sunday, per data from CoinGecko. That was enough to place the coin in the top 15 cryptocurrencies by market cap, though at its current price, it rank...
Popular meme coins such as Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) each slipped around 7% and 6%, respectively, in the last 24 hours, while Pepe Coin (PEPE) saw an even steeper drop, falling 12.6% as per CoinGecko data.
Amid the chaos, opinions varied wildly—from excitement about mass adoption to sharp critiques of ethics and execution.
Arthur Hayes, co-founder of BitMEX, rallied traders to push $TRUMP to a $100 billion market cap. “Degens, let’s celebrate the emperor by sending his meme coin to 100 Billy by Monday,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
Official Trump Solana Meme Coin Falls as Melania Drops Token of Her Own
Donald Trump's official meme coin, TRUMP, fell sharply late Sunday evening following a post from Melania Trump’s social media accounts promoting what appears to be a crypto tied to her name. “The Official Melania Meme is live,” a post on Melania Trump’s X account, that Donald Trump has since retweeted, reads. The post was also shared via the incoming First Lady’s Truth Social account. Dubbed Melania, the Solana-based token has surged more than 12,000% in the last 24 hours to $6.70, DEX Screener...
Bad move for crypto?
Others condemned the move as exploitative and unethical. Coffeezilla, a YouTuber known for exposing crypto scams, didn’t hold back:
“80% of tokens vest to insiders DURING the presidency... “should be” a crime, but crime is legal now, I guess?” he said, blasting the meme coin debuts.
Alpha Prime Capital founder William Scythe accused Trump of prioritizing personal gain over public service:
“This is a very sad day for America when the President realizes he can scam people himself, going from the most anti-crypto to a crypto maniac... scamming his MAGA cult with $TRUMP coin,” Scythe wrote.
Melania’s $MELANIA token faced even sharper backlash. Conor Grogan, head of product business operations at Coinbase, noted:
Dogecoin Dips as Official Trump Meme Coin Steals the Spotlight—And Solana Spikes
President-elect Donald Trump launched an official TRUMP meme coin on Solana late Friday, attracting billions of dollars' worth of trading volume as the coin vaulted into the top 40 cryptocurrencies by market cap. But other major meme coins appear to be falling in price as traders sell to ape into TRUMP instead. Dogecoin, for example, rose to a more than one-month peak price of above $0.43 on Friday night before the TRUMP news began widely circulating. Quickly, it fell, dropping to a current pric...
“This token was handled by a less professional team... the creator wallet was funded via a Solana memecoin launchpad.”
For some, like Caitlin Long, CEO of Custodia Bank, the incident hinted at future regulatory shifts:
“WELL, one of the side effects of meme-coining is that Trump now has a real incentive to change the taxation of #crypto in the US,” Long tweeted.
One step forward, two steps back
For others, the moment represented a step backward:
“This isn’t onboarding. This isn’t education. This isn’t how we build a better future. We have to do better,” lending platform ZeroLend’s co-founder Gafoor Khan wrote on X.
Did Donald Trump Really Just Drop a Solana Meme Coin?
Talk about a Friday night surprise. President-elect Donald Trump's social media accounts shared what appears to be an official Solana meme coin called TRUMP, just three days before he's set to be sworn in for his second term in the White House. Degen traders bought in immediately, generating hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of trading volume as on-chain sleuths and security experts hunted for red flags. But with Trump's X and Truth Social posts still live after more than an hour, and some...
Many traders reflected on SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s past warnings. Pseudonymous crypto trader Ash Crypto tweeted: “I think we all need to say this: we are sorry Gary Gensler, you were right, our space is a joke.”
Yet amid the chaos, Daan Crypto struck a hopeful note about the mid-term possibilities:
“I think the market might enjoy this more than you think in the weeks to come,” the crypto trader wrote. “Especially when something happens where they bring the Trump coin to several chains (including ETH), which would make the entire market go crazy.”
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair
