Crypto

Trump launches meme coin ahead of inauguration

Published

1 year ago

January 18, 2025

Trump launches meme coin ahead of inauguration

Analysis: Trump plans to take Greenland, Canada, and Panama Canal

On Tuesday, President-elect Trump refused to rule out military action to pursue his unprecedented vow to take Greenland and the Panama Canal — plus absorb Canada. Why has he set his sights on expanding beyond the United States’ borders? Jim discusses that with Jim Zirin of Washington Monthly on “The Final 5.”

President-elect Donald Trump has launched a new meme coin called $TRUMP. He made the announcement in a post on Truth Social post late Friday, describing the cryptocurrency as a celebration of “WINNING” the presidential election.

Analysts say it has the potential to make a lot of money for Trump and his family, but some ethics experts say it’s another effort to cash in on the nation’s highest office.

What is the $TRUMP coin?

The new Trump-backed meme coin is a cryptocurrency token with an image of Trump following his assassination attempt.

It was developed by Solana, a cryptocurrency and blockchain company, with a limited supply of 200 million $TRUMP coins at initial launch. The supply will expand to 1 billion coins over the next three years, the coin’s website states.

The remaining tokens that haven’t been put up for sale yet are owned by the Trump Organization affiliate CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight Fight LLC, a company formed in Delaware on Jan. 7, state filings show. Forbes reports that both companies will receive an undisclosed amount of revenue from the coin trade.

By the numbers:

The price of $TRUMP increased by more than 300% to just below $29 as of 10:15 a.m. ET Saturday. It reached a market cap of $5.81 billion, according to CoinMarketCap data obtained by Forbes.

$TRUMP disclaimer

There’s a disclaimer on the $TRUMP website stating that the token is “not intended to be, or the subject of” an investment opportunity nor a security of any type, and is “not political and has nothing to do with” any political activity or government agency.

RELATED: Millionaire says he’s buried $2M in hidden treasures across the US

Why are meme coins risky?

Dig deeper:

Although all cryptocurrency carries risk, meme coins can be especially risky for traders, an expert told CNBC.

“Meme coins are among the riskiest of cryptocurrencies because they seem to emerge from nowhere and information about them can be sparse,” he says. “They’re expected to soar and plummet as the public sentiment shifts this way and that. Meme coins may capture the public’s fancy today and be gone tomorrow.”

Why are Trump’s meme coins considered unethical?

The other side:

Ethics attorneys called the latest venture by Trump and his family a blatant effort to profiteer from the presidency.

“It is literally cashing in on the presidency — creating a financial instrument so people can transfer money to the president’s family in connection with his office” Adav Noti, executive director of Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit ethics group, told The New York Times. “It is beyond unprecedented.”

Crypto surges after Trump win

The backstory:

The price of bitcoin topped $100,000 again early Friday as a pumped up cryptocurrency industry expects early action by Trump when he’s sworn in as president next week.

RELATED: Crypto markets surge after Trump’s election victory

Once a skeptic who said a few years ago that bitcoin ” seems like a scam,” Trump has embraced digital currencies with a convert’s zeal. He vowed on the campaign trail to take steps early in his presidency to make the U.S. into the “crypto capital” of the world.

His promises including creating a U.S. crypto stockpile, enacting industry-friendly regulation and event appointing a crypto “czar” for his administration.

“You’re going to be very happy with me,” Trump told crypto-enthusiasts at a bitcoin conference last summer.

By the numbers:

According to Forbes, bitcoin hit several new record highs after Trump’s win, surpassing $100,000 within a month of Election Day. Roughly $1.8 trillion was added to the global crypto market’s aggregate market value in 2024, and $1 trillion of that was since Election Day, according to CoinGecko via Forbes.

Other Trump merchandise

Big picture view:

Trump’s meme coin is one of several products he has launched in recent years. He has a line of perfumes and colognes, along with “Trump Watches” celebrating his election win. His pre-win “Trump Watches” were valued up to $100,000 in September, and there was also the debut of $100 silver coins, 1,000 pairs of limited edition sneakers, $60 Trump-branded bibles and NFT cards, according to Forbes. Trump also released a line of signed and unsigned guitars sold at $11,500 and $1,500 each, respectively, for $4.6 million in sales.

Trump has received the bulk of his merchandise revenue through his NFTs, which reportedly earned him about $7.2 million in licensing fees.

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Crypto

Crypto Crime Wave Fueled by Chinese-Language Money Laundering | PYMNTS.com

Published

2 hours ago

January 27, 2026

Press Room

Crypto Crime Wave Fueled by Chinese-Language Money Laundering | PYMNTS.com

Cryptocurrency laundering was an $82 billion problem last year, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday (Jan. 27), citing data from blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis.

Chinese-language money laundering networks made up $16.1 billion of that total as they play an increasing role in crypto crime, the report said.

“These are groups that are growing exponentially,” Andrew Fierman, head of national security intelligence at Chainalysis, told Bloomberg, per the report. “We’re talking about growth of over 7,300 times faster than other illicit flows.”

Although China has outlawed crypto transactions, illegal activity continues as the government chiefly focuses on behavior that threatens capital controls or financial stability, according to the report.

The networks “have really embraced cryptocurrencies,” said Kathryn Westmore, a senior associate fellow at the Centre for Finance and Security at RUSI, per the report, adding that crypto provides “a way to launder the proceeds of cash-generating criminal activities, like drugs or fraud.”

The news followed a warning from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) in August, which said Chinese money laundering networks are now among the most significant threats to the American financial system, helping fuel the operations of Mexico’s most powerful drug cartels.

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“The networks have become effective partners because they can move cash quickly, absorb losses and leverage demand from Chinese nationals seeking to bypass Beijing’s strict currency controls,” PYMNTS reported Aug. 29. “By pairing cartel dollars with Chinese demand for U.S. currency, these networks have created what FinCEN called a ‘mutualistic relationship’ that strengthens both sides.”

Meanwhile, Eric Jardine, head of research at Chainalysis, discussed last year’s record-setting levels of crypto crime with PYMNTS in an interview published Monday (Jan. 26). Around $154 billion flowed to illicit addresses, the most ever recorded, and there was a 160% increase in illicit volumes.

“But treating that number as evidence of runaway criminal adoption may miss the more consequential story,” PYMNTS wrote. “What changed in 2025 was not merely volume, but the identity of the actors, the scale at which they operated, and the implications this has for banks, regulators, and the future architecture of financial blockchain compliance.”

The true inflection came from “a shift in who’s doing what,” Jardine said, adding that in 2025, nation states, most notably Russia, began taking part “in earnest in the crypto ecosystem,” chiefly through sanctions evasion.

Unlike earlier state-linked activity, like North Korea’s hacking campaigns, this was not marginal behavior at the edges of the system, but “industrial-scale financial activity conducted in plain sight,” PYMNTS wrote.

Crypto

Fixing BTC’s Quantum Issue Tops All Bitcoin Development Priorities, Says Willy Woo

Published

14 hours ago

January 27, 2026

Press Room

Fixing BTC’s Quantum Issue Tops All Bitcoin Development Priorities, Says Willy Woo

Quantum risk is emerging as a decisive hurdle for bitcoin’s institutional future as sovereign investors weigh long-term resilience, pushing gold and BTC into sharper focus amid debt cycles, macro uncertainty, and geopolitical realignment, according to on-chain analyst Willy Woo.

Crypto

Strategy buys even more Bitcoin—$264 million of it—even as Bitcoin slumps to $87,000. | Fortune

Published

1 day ago

January 26, 2026

Press Room

Strategy buys even more Bitcoin—4 million of it—even as Bitcoin slumps to ,000. | Fortune

Despite the current downturn for crypto, Strategy added even more Bitcoin to its collection. The company bought more than 2,900 Bitcoin last week, bringing its total to over 712,000, according to an X post by cofounder Michael Saylor. The move follows a more than $2 billion purchase earlier this month.

Strategy is the first and biggest digital asset treasury, or a type of company that acquires and holds on to large amounts of crypto. Saylor’s company began investing in Bitcoin in 2020 and now holds more than 3% of the total supply. This business model has confronted major challenges in the past few months, as the largest cryptocurrency has plummeted since its all-time high in October. Bitcoin is worth about $87,000, down about 31% since then, according to Binance.

One analyst views Saylor’s purchase as expected, considering the company’s business strategy, which is to continually amass Bitcoin on the theory it will appreciate in the long term, and to time purchases to coincide with market dips.

“It’s not surprising for me to see that they’re really aggressively continuing to purchase [Bitcoin]”, said Nathan Schmidt, an analyst at CFRA Research. “It is certainly the playbook for them these days.”

Bitcoin’s fall from its all-time high of about $126,000 in October was caused in part by a flash crash in the fall, where crypto traders lost more than $19 billion in their positions. Misfortunes for digital assets have only continued this calendar year. The sector dipped as tensions mounted between the U.S. and Europe over Greenland. In addition, major regulatory legislation, referred to as the Clarity Act, has stalled as major figures in the crypto industry spar over its details.

The major cryptocurrency isn’t the only one to suffer losses, as altcoins are down as well. Ethereum is down 30% in the last three months to its current price of $2,899, and Solana is down more than 38% to its price of about $124, according to Binance.

Crypto’s dip has led to disastrous returns for digital asset treasuries like Strategy. Saylor’s company stock is down about 64% since July to its current price of about $160.

Schmidt, the analyst from CFRA Research, argues that the biggest risk to Strategy is long-term declines in the value of Bitcoin. He says that the company could survive such a dip in the next few years because of its liquidity, but that over time the company would be in trouble.

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