The cryptocurrency market saw an unexpected launch on January 18 when the Official Trump memecoin, known as $TRUMP and endorsed by President-elect Donald Trump, hit the scene.
Trump announced it through his social media accounts, directing people to buy the Solana-based token via a specified centralized intermediary and providing the contract address.
The launch triggered a surge in Solana’s native token, which reached an all-time high of $270. This pushed Solana’s market capitalization to $120 billion, raising questions about its sustainability and its impact on Ethereum, a key competitor. Ethereum had been tied to Trump through World Liberty Financial, but the choice to launch $TRUMP on Solana caught attention.
The timing aligned with the “Crypto Ball,” a high-profile event in Washington, D.C., near the White House, honoring Trump. Attendees included MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Gemini’s Winklevoss twins, and David Sacks, Trump’s crypto and AI adviser.
The $TRUMP token quickly reached a market capitalization of $6.9 billion and was listed on exchanges like Bybit, Bitget, and KuCoin. It launched with 200 million tokens in circulation, out of a total supply of 1 billion, with 80% held by the issuers. They deposited 44.4 million $TRUMP tokens into single-sided liquidity pools, managed by decentralized exchanges Meteora and Jupiter. The largest pools are TRUMP-USDC, with a total value locked of $483 million, and TRUMP-SOL, at $67 million.
