Why Trump’s meme coin is a cash grab
Three days before his presidential inauguration, Donald Trump launched a meme coin, a type of cryptocurrency whose value is buoyed by social media and internet culture, rather than any sort of functionality or intrinsic value.
The coin – officially called $Trump – briefly ascended into the top 15 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization and attracted over a half-million buyers.
Referencing the coin in a news conference on Jan. 21, 2025, a reporter asked Trump if he intended to continue selling products that benefited him personally while being president. “You made a lot of money [on $Trump], sir,” he told Trump, who seemed oblivious to its meteoric rise in value. “How much?” Trump asked. “Several billion dollars, it seems like, in the last couple days.” Over the following week, various publications claimed the meme coin had “ballooned [Trump’s] net worth” making him a “crypto billionaire.” While it’s true that Trump stands to benefit handsomely from the meme coin and his other crypto ventures, the claims of Trump himself earning billions off it are overblown.
Meme coins became popular in 2013 with the launch of Dogecoin, which its creators intended as a joke, spoofing the many other seemingly useless cryptocurrencies that were popping up at the time.
