Key Takeaways
On Monday, Jan 20, Donald Trump became the first American President since Grover Cleveland in 1893 to serve two non-consecutive terms.
While the Republican businessman’s political career has always been mired in controversy, large chunks of the crypto world seemed to have turned a blind eye to the New Yorker’s activities. A reasoned observer may think this could be a little odd, considering that, less than four years ago, he called Bitcoin a “scam .”
Anyway, with the world of crypto always keen to cash in on current affairs and America’s Commander-in-Chief taking a keen interest in digital finance, let’s look at three of the biggest political memecoins and see how they have performed over the last week.
The weekend before Donald Trump re-entered the White House, he shocked the crypto world by launching his own memecoin.
The Official Trump (TRUMP) token excited the crypto market when it was released on Jan. 18 with an initial market cap of just under 1 billion dollars. The token then shot up the following day, entering the top 20 and peaking at $75.35, with a market cap of just under $15 billion.
Things settled down, and the newly-installed president seemed to put the kibosh on the highly centralized memecoin later on the week when he admitted that he “doesn’t know much ” about the token.
By Jan. 24, it was worth about $35.05 – up 461% from $6.24 on its launch date, but down 53% from its all-time high – and had a market cap of $7 billion, making it the 25th-largest crypto.
Not content with becoming the first non-consecutive two-term First Lady since Frances Cleveland, Melania Trump took her first steps into the crypto world last week.
The Official Melania Meme token – which, like her husband’s memecoin, is based on Solana (SOL) – hit the open market just one day after Mrs Trump’s husband’s cryptocurrency.
MELANIA has been in the shadow of TRUMP since it came out, trading at $7.40 on Jan. 19.
While it reached an all-time high of $13.73 on the day of the inauguration, it swiftly collapsed, sinking 65% from its initial listing price and 81% from its record score to trade at an all-time low of $2.56 on Jan. 24. At that time, its market cap was about $475 million, making it the 149th-largest crypto.
In a strange twist of fate, one of the biggest losers from Donald Trump’s first official foray into the crypto market was what, until Jan. 18, was pretty much the biggest, and the longest serving, Trump-related memecoin.
MAGA (TRUMP), which launched in 2023, peaked at $17.52 on June 1, 2024, when its $752.5 million market cap would have put it just outside the top 100 cryptos.
On Jan. 19 2025, MAGA was worth $3.62. However, as excitement about Trump’s own memecoin shot up, the price of MAGA collapsed.
By Jan. 24, 2024, it had lost nearly 65% of its value and was a rather unimpressive 682 in the list of the largest cryptos.