Key takeaways
- The TRUMP token has overtaken Pepe and Shiba Inu to become the second largest coin.
- The token has faced criticism over its distribution, being 80% owned by companies linked to the Trump Organization.
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TRUMP, a newly launched coin created by President-elect Donald Trump, flipped Pepe (PEPE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) to become the second largest meme token by market capitalization, CoinGecko. data watch. The milestone was reached just over a day after launch.
With a current market capitalization of approximately $13.5 billion, TRUMP is second only to Dogecoin (DOGE), the popular and favored coin of Elon Musk, co-leader of the Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE). under the new Trump administration. The market value of Dogecoin stands at around $54 billion according to the latest data.
The official Trump meme was featured on Truth Social and X on Friday evening, two days before his inauguration. He described the symbolic launch as a celebration of his ideals and a symbol of “WIN”.
The valuation of the token climbed to around $8 billion in less than three hours after launch. In the hours that followed, its prices rose above $30 following a flurry of listings on popular crypto exchanges such as Upbit, HTX, Kraken, Gate.io, OKX, and Binance.
On Saturday evening, Coinbase announced the addition of TRUMP to its listing roadmap, a move indicating that the leading exchange plans to list the token in the future.
Support from major trading platforms further fueled TRUMP’s bullish momentum. The token’s value doubled after Coinbase’s announcement. At the time of writing, one TRUMP is worth around $69, representing a 230% increase over 24 hours.
During the same period, DOGE and SHIB fell by around 7% each, while PEPE lost 11% of its value. The broad meme coin market was in sharp decline, with most tokens posting double-digit losses, erasing their recent gains.
Unlike other major coins, Farcoin (FARTCOIN) continues to grow and maintain its gains at press time.
Ongoing controversy
There is a lot of excitement – ​​and skepticism – around Trump’s unexpected token launch. A whopping 80% are owned by companies linked to the Trump Organization, creating a highly centralized environment. This raises serious concerns about market manipulation, the potential for coverage disruption and the long-term viability of the project.
Stephen Findeisen, widely known as Coffeezilla, a YouTuber and investigative journalist known for his work exposing scams and fraudulent schemes, called TRUMP’s post “bad work.”
Many Trump supporters, especially those unfamiliar with crypto, could face financial losses, according to Findeisen.
> dropping TRUMP’s memecoin 2 days before becoming president is bad business
> the new SEC/DOJ guarantees the absence of prosecution
> 80% of tokens are awarded to insiders DURING the presidency
> Most people who lose money will be MAGA who are not crypto natives
> *should* be a crime but crime is legal now, ig?– Cafézilla (@coffeebreak_YT) January 18, 2025
Moonshot, which recently became the top financial app on the Apple App Store in the United States thanks to the TRUMP token, said they had onboarded more than 400,000 users.
Venture capitalist Chris Burniske said he was uncomfortable with token allocation, but saw its enormous potential to inspire future innovation in the space, similar to how “the DAO movement of 2016” influenced the ICO boom .
Commenting on this issue, Ryan Selkis, founder of Messari, believes that the current distribution of tokens constitutes a major vulnerability that could lead to problems in the long term. He suggested the team burn 75% of the token supply.
“You created $5 billion in value overnight. Adjust the distribution from 80-20 to 50-50 and make it an even partnership, and it will fly higher. Keep it 80-20 and it will backfire and be a drag on the administrator,” Selkis wrote on X.
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