The election of Donald Trump as US president for the second time will have many implications, but for those involved in cryptocurrency, it has been a particularly exciting time.
With a raft of pro-crypto pledges and appointments, as well as promised sackings (which led to resignations) of officials who supported more regulation, the stage has been set for a crypto boom. In particular, the plan to build up a strategic reserve of Bitcoin led to its currency soaring above the $100,000 mark.
Mr Trump took office on January 20th, although it may seem like a lot longer ago, so swiftly has the new administration moved to make an impact with a flurry of executive orders and policy initiatives.
Trump’s Own Meme Coins
In this blizzard of activity, it can appear as if crypto has been sidelined for the moment, but that has not been the case. Indeed, Mr Trump launched his own cryptocurrency – $Trump – just a couple of days before taking office, with his wife Melania joining in by launching her own, called $MELANIA, each currency coming in the form of meme coins.
At the time, Bitcoin climbed to a new high of $109,000, but since then it has dipped, falling back below $100,000.
According to RBC Ukraine, which has its own obvious hopes and fears about the second Trump presidency, the crypto market has ‘crashed’ since the election.
This is something of an exaggeration, of course, but there has been a dip, with Bitcoin dropping as low as $92,000, which it claimed was due to Mr Trump not mentioning Crypto in his inauguration speech.
Of course, XRPaynet users trading in and spending cryptocurrency will generally be wise enough not to get carried away by what is or isn’t said in a fortnight of policy pronouncements and speeches across a myriad of issues. The very fact the president and first lady had just launched their own currencies hardly points to a neglect of crypto.
However, it may act as a reminder that crypto is a volatile market and that is why you need to be smart with your trading choices and payments. Indeed, in the current febrile situation, many events and possibilities should act as a collective reminder of this.
Another President Gets In On The Act
Among these is the fact that, for every cryptocurrency that becomes a lasting success, others crash and burn. This appears to have been the case in the curious instance of $CAR, launched by the Central African Republic’s leader President Toudera. Perhaps recent events have persuaded him that presidential power is the way to turbo-boost currencies.
He declared the currency to be “an experiment designed to show how something as simple as a meme can unite people, support national development, and put the Central African Republic on the world stage in a unique way”. However, within 24 hours it had lost 95 per cent of its value.
Part of the problem came about, the Financial Times reported, because some thought the move was a fraud, with claims that the launch video was a Deepfake, while X suspended its account. However, the country’s government confirmed the meme coin was real and set up a new X account. Perhaps there is hope for it after all.
Whether that is the sort of crypto anyone is attracted by in the current volatile circumstances is another matter, especially as meme coins have a reputation for being beneficial to early investors at the expense of later buyers in a pump-and-dump scenario.
Musk Grabs The Market By The Bolz
While Mr Trump has not had a lot to say on crypto in the last couple of weeks – an age in Trump terms – his ally and crypto-enthusiast Elon Musk has been swift to fill the void.
His latest – and characteristically eccentric – act was to briefly change his name on X to Harry Bolz, a play on words on ‘Hairy Balls’. It just so happened that Harry Bolz was the name of a new currency that launched the same day. This was yet another meme coin, with a mind-blowing 17,000,000 per cent rise in value on day one.
The apparent chaos of the whirlwind world of crypto just now, hinging so much on everything President Trump or Elon Musk says or does, or rising and falling on allegations of deepfakes and the ephemeral appeal of meme coins, suggests this is a market one should approach with caution.
It may be that among the most stable currencies there is much to be gained by smart investors, but in a world where Greenland can become Red, White and Blue Land at the stroke of a pen, it pays to keep a cool head and invest well.