Donald Trump’s viral meme coin saw significant volatility on Tuesday after the President attempted to distance himself from the $8 billion project that bears his name.
“I don’t know much about it other than I launched it,” Trump told reporters at a tech executive meeting. “I heard it was very successful. I haven’t checked.”
After climbing to a 24-hour high of $48.18, the Official Trump (TRUMP) meme coin fell 16% to $40.29 immediately following his comments. It has since regained a footing above $43.37.
When informed about the token’s multibillion-dollar valuation, Trump dismissed it as “peanuts” compared to tech investments, speaking alongside executives from SoftBank, OpenAI, and Oracle.
The token recovered by roughly 7.5% within an hour of his comments, bringing the token back to an $8.7 billion market cap with a fully diluted value of $43.6 billion.
The latter measures how much a coin’s market cap could be valued if all of its supply comes into circulation based on how much it is currently worth.
The TRUMP token had already faced turbulence after First Lady Melania Trump launched her own competing meme coin Sunday, triggering a 50% price collapse amid massive sell-offs from early investors, with the crypto community divided on what the two meme coins meant for the industry.
Both tokens’ supplies appear concentrated among the project’s issuers, data from on-chain research firm Bubblemaps shows. One anonymous trader managed to turn $1 million into over $116 million through what appeared to be perfectly timed purchases.
Investment bank and financial services firm TD Cowen warned through its Washington Research Group that the presidential meme coins could derail bipartisan crypto legislation efforts as investigations into potential insider trading intensify existing partisan tensions.
“This puts at risk the ability to advance the crypto bill with the bipartisan support it will need to become law,” the firm reportedly said on Tuesday.
Despite the president’s apparent indifference, major platforms, including Coinbase and Robinhood, have listed the “official” Trump meme coin, which still maintains a multibillion-dollar market cap.
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair
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