President-elect Donald Trump gestures during the Bitcoin 2024 event in Nashville, Tennessee, July 27, 2024.
Kevin Wurm | Reuters
at Solana GROUND the token soared after the launch of a coin tied to President-elect Donald Trump on the popular blockchain network.
SOL price rose 12% to $247.76 on Saturday, according to Coin Metrics. Previously, it had jumped almost 23%. Ether fell by more than 6%.
The moves began Friday evening after the launch of a new coin announced on Trump’s social media accounts and issued on the Solana blockchain. “Official Trump” (TRUMP) has a market capitalization of over $5 billion and is the largest coin in the Solana network, according to CoinGecko.
The move came ahead of Trump’s inauguration on Monday, which is widely expected to usher in a new era of innovation and productivity in the crypto industry, and the day crypto villain Gary Gensler ended his tenure as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Solana is the fourth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, excluding stablecoins. It was created in 2020 as a faster, cheaper alternative to Ethereum and now hosts some of the most popular meme coins like dogwifhat and Pudgy Penguins, as well as decentralized finance (DeFi) and gaming projects.
The token has become so popular that asset managers are looking to issue exchange-traded funds that track its price. The decision deadline for potential ETFs from Bitwise, VanEck, 21Shares and Canary is approaching January 25. ProShares also filed four different SOL-based ETFs on Friday evening. If approved this year, SOL ETFs could attract only a fraction of the assets that were invested in bitcoin ETFs during their first year of trading, according to JPMorgan.
SOL has gained 85% in 2024. It is now about 6% from its all-time high of November 22.
Trump’s latest crypto project
The “official Trump” coin was announced on the president-elect’s X and Truth Social accounts Friday evening, the same night as the Crypto Ball, a celebration of his return to the White House hosted by leaders in the cryptography in Washington, DC.
It began trading around 10:40 p.m. ET on Friday at a price of $4.29 and has since soared 604% to $30.22, according to CoinGecko data.
A disclaimer on the new coin’s website says it is “intended to function as an expression of support and commitment to the ideals and beliefs embodied in the ‘$TRUMP’ symbol and associated artwork, and… not intended to be, or to be the subject of, an investment opportunity, an investment contract or a security of any nature whatsoever.
There are 200 million coins initially available, which will grow to 1 billion over three years, according to the website. Only 10% is publicly available, another 10% is held in cash, and 80% is for “creators and CIC Digital,” a subsidiary of The Trump Organization.
The meme coin is the latest fundraising effort from the Trump team – which also launched two NFT collections – Trump Digital Trading Cards on the Polygon blockchain and digital trading cards Trump Bitcoin on the Bitcoin blockchain – as well as the DeFi World Liberty Financial platform on Ethereum.
