WASHINGTON – The Trump family’s new crypto token surged in just two days to become one of the most valuable forms of digital currency in the world, creating the potential for a multibillion-dollar payout to the family but also generating a storm of questions about the conflicts of interest the new venture creates.
US President-elect Donald Trump announced the launch of the new token, $Trump, on Jan 17 as hundreds gathered for a crypto-inspired inauguration ball not far from the White House.
The venture won praise by some as a sign of how digital currencies are now going mainstream in the United States.
But economists and even some longtime crypto investors said the new digital coin, known as a memecoin, might also emerge as a landmark moment in the speculative history of crypto trading and the potential dangers it poses to the financial system. Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency tied to an online joke or a celebrity mascot.
“If people want to gamble, I don’t really care,” said Mr Lee Reiners, a former Federal Reserve economist who is now a lecturer for a centre studying global economic markets at Duke University. “What I care about is when this crypto bubble bursts – and it will burst – it will end up impacting people across the economy even if they don’t have direct investment in crypto. And this new coin is making it worse.”
At least on paper, the Trump tokens in the market as of Jan 19 had a total trading value of nearly US$13 billion (S$17.8 billion), and a total of US$29 billion worth of trades had taken place in just two days. That calculation is based on the nearly US$64 value of each of the 200 million tokens issued, according to CoinGecko, an industry data tracker.
This suggests, as of Jan 19, that Trump’s coin was the 19th most valuable form of cryptocurrency in the world, the CoinGecko tally indicated.
The Trump family late on Jan 19 moved to add a second new crypto token, this one called $Melania, with Trump and Mrs Melania Trump, his wife, both promoting it on Truth Social, just as Trump was about to start a rally in Washington celebrating his inauguration.
That move then coincided with a dive in the value of Trump’s own token, dropping to as low as US$41, before starting to rise again, as doubts appeared to emerge over just how valuable these new tokens would actually be.
Mewanwhile, Bitcoin, the largest and oldest crypto coin, was steady around US$105,000. NYTIMES
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