President-elect Trump launched his own cryptocurrency overnight and swiftly appeared to make more than $25 billion on paper for himself and his companies.

Why it matters: The stunning launch of $TRUMP caught the entire industry off-guard, and speaks to both his personal influence and the ascendancy of cryptocurrency in his administration.

  • It also speaks to the nature of the crypto industry that someone could have $25 billion worth of something that literally did not exist 24 hours previously.
  • NutWrench@lemmy.ml
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    1 hour ago

    Meanwhile, back in reality:

    The venture was co-ordinated by CIC Digital LLC - an affiliate of the Trump Organization - which has previously sold Trump-branded shoes and fragrances.

    Meme coins are used to build popularity for a viral internet trend or movement, but they lack intrinsic value and are extremely volatile investments.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9vmym2jvy9o.amp

    Just because you SAY something is “worth hundreds of billions” does not mean it is actually WORTH hundreds of billions.

    • HammerMii@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      There is a lot more of this coming.

      Trump intends to leverage his office to make his family wealthier.

  • Fizz@lemmy.nz
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    5 hours ago

    Trump holds 80% of the supply. This is going to be the biggest rug pull of all time. Americans are literally getting shitcoin scammed by their own presidents holy shit what a timeline.

    • NutWrench@lemmy.ml
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      57 minutes ago

      And these “coins” are actually tokens. Not only are they not backed by any real assets (venture capital, real estate, etc), the damn things don’t even exist in reality!

    • TotalCourage007@lemm.ee
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      2 hours ago

      Honestly, I won’t forgive Biden for just smiling in response to Trump winning after not leaving 4 years sooner. Before anyone asks, I voted for Harris, so don’t shove that narrative down my throat.

    • cley_faye@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      Honestly, it’s kinda impressive that this scheme still works in 2025. How low can people go, I wonder.

    • clutchtwopointzero@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      America will have a law about this probably by 2070, after many more generations of Americans lose money to those scams and the legislative finally has people who understand technology to write laws about this

    • redditron_2000_4@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      This is money from foreign governments and corporations buying influence. It has nothing to do with “Americans”.

      • Fizz@lemmy.nz
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        2 hours ago

        There are plenty of Americans that will buy this coin and lose money.

        • AstridWipenaugh@lemmy.world
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          2 hours ago

          Yes, to the tune of 10s or maybe a couple 100s of millions of dollars. But now Saudi Arabia can come in and buy a billion worth of the coin as a direct donation to trump with zero oversight. This is open corruption on a scale we simply haven’t seen before.

          • Klear@lemmy.world
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            1 hour ago

            No doubt. Just saying it’s gonna be a rag pull towards the idiots in addition to all the corruption.

  • AAA@feddit.org
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    4 hours ago

    $25 billion, in paper. The value will be down to zero way before he manages to sell off even $1 billion from it. And thats a generous guess. Meme coins don’t retain value.

    Making ANY money this way is outrageous, but we sooner solve world peace and world hunger than Trump being able to sell this off for the current paper value.

    • Acters@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      Yeah I feel as though he won’t get that amount of money either and making any money is also outrageous.

      I feel like the biggest pressing issue here is that this is not meant to go to the moon and stay there. Instead I think the real motive is to make inflation. Look at it, it’s not meant to gain that amount of value, it’s meant to skew our perception of value. This way the current inflationary prices don’t look out of place when, in reality, everything is over valued. I guess it is also meant to make some people more complacent to inflation by giving them hope of “there being a chance” even though it clearly details how screwed over most of them will end up in the end compared to the house/dealer. Gambling is and will always be a big problem that adds more pressure to an otherwise unhealthy economy.

  • umbraroze@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    It’s easy to think that crypto is over. The NFT bubble is so deflated. We’ve seen big companies like FTX bomb the hell out. I mean, the signs are obvious now, aren’t they? Crypto was, conclusively, proven to be the scam everyone said it would be and we don’t need any more proof, right?

    And then we hear Trump administration is really into this crypto nonsense.

    Somehow.

    Guess they didn’t get the memo.

    Brace yourself for 4 years of spectacular, glorious fail.

    And if someone says stuff like “oh, Trump just got filthy rich off of the meme coin he launched yesterday”, let’s wait and see how the coin does at the end of his administration.

  • DarkFuture@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    I hope everyone is acutely aware that you, me, WE are not in a class war.

    WE HAVE LOST A CLASS WAR.

    What happens now?

  • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    Having an ETF doesn’t make you real. Being Bitcoin makes you real.

    I wish there was a better metric at the moment, but there isn’t.

  • ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml
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    14 hours ago

    Trump launches meme coin money laundering scheme, apparently makes launders more than $25 billion overnight

    Ftfy

  • vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de
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    8 hours ago

    lol crypto is worth jack shit. I can just keep sending the same money to myself and it would cause the price to go up…

      • vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de
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        3 hours ago

        it’s how crypto markets do. Since anonymity is a feature, any transactions will increase its value due to it being “used” more

        • fuck_u_spez_in_particular@lemmy.world
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          2 hours ago

          No, because that would be an infinite money glitch, everyone would be rich… (that uses crypto).

          It’s actually very simple basic market-economics, and independently of anonymity, you buy, you’ll drive the price up, you’ll sell, you’ll drive the price down. It’s slightly more complicated, because it involves makers (they set the price at which to sell or buy) and takers (which take the offer by the maker) and psychology (e.g. promotion on youtube to drive the price up) and obviously increasingly algorithms. But in general it’s still demand and supply, anonymity doesn’t have anything to do here apart from being more prone to scams. Take Monero as example one of the most anonym cryptos but still fairly stable (in crypto terms).

          So to drive the price up, you either have to have some kind of good promotion (which at the end is just money from someone else), or a lot of money yourself.

          • vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de
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            2 hours ago

            the value of a cryptocurrency is based on its perceived value. Perceived value is based on market activity. If I keep sending money to myself it just shows up as market activity, with nobody being able to tell i sent money to myself.

            gdp works this way too btw. I sell you $1 worth of stuff, you sell me $1 of stuff, nobody is any richer but gdp went up by $2. Except we can filter this kind of abuse out because it’s not anonymous.

            • fuck_u_spez_in_particular@lemmy.world
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              1 hour ago

              But GDP is not the price of an asset, it’s a metric to measure the economic activity.

              Is it really that hard to understand? The price is dictated by markets… Like with stock and other speculative assets. It’s a little bit wilder, possibly due to anonymity and wild promotion on various platforms (like youtube) etc. But in it’s essence it’s still a market…

              • vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de
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                27 seconds ago

                the price of an asset is based on its economic activity. You said so yourself. The price is dictated by markets. By how much is bought and sold on markets. That is the definition of economic activity. Which part of that do you not understand?