Investors are flocking to buy the TRUMP meme coin in Australia

Trump's official memecoin has broken records since launching on Saturday. But is it good for crypto?
Days before reentering the White House, president-elect Donald Trump launched a memecoin that quickly broke records, catapulting to a multi-billion dollar valuation within hours.
While crypto investors have expected the incoming Trump administration to be good news for the crypto sector, few would have predicted him to steal the limelight with his own token.
Memecoins are novelty digital tokens that are created as a joke, often inspired by famous internet memes or recent news.
The OFFICIAL TRUMP meme coin ($TRUMP) launched on the Solana network on Saturday afternoon (AEDT time), rising from less than US$1 per token to more than US$72 by Sunday night. It has since dropped to around US$45 as of Monday.
Unlike most memecoins, which often have small liquidity (making it hard to sell large amounts), the TRUMP token has seen billions of dollars of tokens bought and sold since launching.
While many early investors will have made a profit, others would have lost money.
Like all memecoins, the Trump token has no intrinsic value and is not intended to be a serious investment. It has also been prone to volatile price swings.
Anyone looking to buy the TRUMP meme coin should be aware of the risks involved in buying speculative assets like cryptocurrencies.
According to the official website, $TRUMP is "intended to function as an expression of support for, and engagement with, the ideals and beliefs embodied by the symbol "$TRUMP" and "not intended to be... an investment opportunity".
Another red flag is the fact that the Trump-affiliated company Fight Fight Fight LLC owns 80% of the 1 billion TRUMP tokens available, which it is free to sell as the tokens unlock over the next 3 years.
On Monday, Melania Trump also launched her own official meme coin ($MELANIA) that also skyrocketed in value in the first hours of trading.
It's unlikely to be the last token launched by the Trump family.
World Liberty Financial, a Trump-family crypto project, announced it would be selling a further 5% of the supply of its WLFI token. Eric Trump teased there would be further developments in the days to come.
How the crypto markets reacted
Despite being seen as the first pro-crypto president, Trump's memecoin has seen the wider crypto markets fall, potentially a result of investors selling off their existing holdings in order to buy TRUMP.
Bitcoin dropped around 5% from US$106,000 to US$100,000 on Monday. XRP and Solana experienced similar drops.
There is also a general concern that the launch of TRUMP and MELANIA appear to benefit the president-elect's family, and signals that the incoming president may simply see crypto as a way to further enrich himself.
James Thomson, Chanticleer columnist at the Australian Financial Review, suggested Trump's "apparent conversion to crypto believer now risks being seen as just another way for him to feather his nest."
Former Trump spokesperson and now-Trump critic Anthony Scaramucci wrote on X/Twitter that the TRUMP meme coin actually undermines the work being done to legitimise cryptocurrency.
"Real leadership is speaking the truth. Not accepting the naked emperor. This is bad and actually mocks the industry we are working so hard to build," he said.
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