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$TRUMP is now trading at a smartphone near you

Oh come on. Is this never going to end?

Yes, this is $TRUMP, Donald Trump's personal cryptocurrency, launched last night at 6 pm. As of this writing, it's trading at about $27.

There are currently 200 million TrumpCoins in circulation, with plans to grow that to one billion within three years. Out of the total supply, 80% are owned by CIC Digital, an affiliate of the Trump Organization, and a CIC co-owned entity called Fight Fight Fight LLC. At the current market value Trump's holdings would be worth $22 billion in 2028. There's more here.

The coins won't keep their $27 value, but even if they go down to $1 Trump's holdings would be worth nearly a billion dollars. Not bad for zero work.

I'm running out of things to say about Trump. I mean, how often can you ponder aloud that this time he's really gone too far? There is no bottom.

41 thoughts on “$TRUMP is now trading at a smartphone near you

  1. bbleh

    There is no bottom.

    Ok it's harsh, but where there is no bottom is the STUPIDITY and GULLIBILITY of his cultists.

    Trump is MUCH more symptom than cause. He's benefiting from the systematic dumbing-down and ethnocultural radicalization of (what's left of) the Republican Party that ramped up under Reagan and then even more under Gingrich, but he is no more responsible for it than he is for the tides. As elsewhere, he saw a parade and jumped out in front and pretended to lead it. This meme-coin nonsense is just another in the long list of examples.

    And it's obvious that "you can't fix stupid" -- the gullible will always be vulnerable to this sort of thing -- but it bears repeating that the rest of (what's left of) the Republican Party went along with it. They DO know better -- or they should -- so a large part of the blame attaches to them. Thanks again, guys!

    1. painedumonde

      So they're shepherding their flock to the wolf's plate? Then point at the car and dog eating immigrant? It tracks.

    2. Jasper_in_Boston

      Ok it's harsh, but where there is no bottom is the STUPIDITY and GULLIBILITY of his cultists.

      Many of them are stupid and gullible, yes. The internet is full of clips of these morons.

      But some of them really, really value white ethnonationalism and sundry other MAGA priorities (eg the Bannon-Miller wing), and they're not stupid at all about getting what they want. A massively corrupt executive branch and a overall degradation of our government aren't things they value in any event. So getting those foisted on them as part of the "price" to pay to gain the various things they want isn't much of a price at all.

  2. Yehouda

    This is not a danger to democracy in the US, and apart from making him money it is also a good distraction from the things that he does that are danger to democracy (e.g. Patel in the FBI and Bondy as AG).

    1. bbleh

      It may not be a danger to democracy, at least not directly, but as Krugman has pointed out, it MAY be a significant danger to economic stability (and thus indirectly to democracy) because it both encourages large-scale speculation and decreases transparency in commodity and other financial markets.

      Think S&L crisis, only an order of magnitude larger.

      Assuming we survive the next 4 years, Patel and Bondi will be gone, but the potential damage from this sort of economically irresponsible nonsense could persist for many years, even decades.

      1. MF

        The total market cap off all crypto us about $4T. The true value of crypto, excluding a handful of utility coins that are actually useful and NFTs that have actual artistic value is 0.

        If / when the market value reverts to true value, $4T is going to go up in smoke, perhaps very quickly.

        Crypto is mostly decoupled from the larger financial system, but not totally - many people who lose money in crypto will need to liquidate other assets. I have no idea what the systemic consequences will be.

        1. bbleh

          True -- for now -- and if that $4T were suddenly to evaporate, the consequences would be significant but manageable (and fall largely on speculators, for which alas too bad so sad).

          The worry -- again paraphrasing Krugman -- is that the Orange Guy will significantly deepen and broaden the volume and reach of crypto, encouraging other parts of the economy, especially financial ones, to become "investors," and even perhaps turning the government into an "investor" (for which read, chump for others to fleece). That $4T could quickly become much larger and -- like, say, collateralized subprime mortgages did -- pose a risk to even larger and otherwise uninvolved parts of the economy.

        2. Jasper_in_Boston

          The true value of crypto, excluding a handful of utility coins that are actually useful and NFTs that have actual artistic value is 0.

          I'm ant-crypto for a variety of reasons. But one could same the same things about US currency. It's not intrinsically worth something. You can't make fillings or jewelry out of greenbacks. It holds value because people are willing to accept it as payment for goods and services (and, in the case of the IRS, for taxes owed). Dollars, like crypto, are worth what people are willing to give you in exchange. Nothing more nothing less.

          If you have sufficient crypto, you can buy all manner of useful stuff (though sure, in many cases you'll need to convert to dollars first, but again, you could say the same things about gold or diamonds).

          1. MF

            1. I never started thinking about the intrinsic value of currencies until crypto made me start. As I understand it, you need currency to do transactions and add a store of value at least for periods of under a day. The total value of all currency is then determined by the volume of transactions you need to perform during the average period that transactors must hold currency to transact. This is why increases in the velocity of money increase money supply and reduce value of currency.

            2. Gold has scarcity value. There will be no RealGold, DogeGold, PepeGold, TrumpGold, or FartGold.

            3. Diamonds are more like NFTs - valuable for sentimental and psychological reasons but actual utility can be replicated by cheaper artificial diamonds.

        3. Five Parrots in a Shoe

          "The true value of crypto, excluding a handful of utility coins that are actually useful and NFTs that have actual artistic value is 0."

          False. Crypto has one real utility: money laundering. Crypto has been a godsend for drug cartels and internet scammers who need to do industrial-scale money laundering. The inherent value of crypto is significant, and will remain so as long as organized crime exists.

    2. JohnH

      It may not be a threat to democracy, but it is that thread to the economy (although not a huge one compared to the policies he's announced) and, more significantly, it's what a more naive nation called plain and simply graft. And you know, tolerating graft, especially while large media operations feel obliged to buy in to all this with plain and simple bribes, sure sounds like a threat to democracy to me.

  3. Salamander

    Just wait until he exec-orders the national debt to be transformed into "trumpcoins." A perfect way to "give the bond holders a haircut" -- like, right down to the actual skull.

  4. akapneogy

    "The coins won't keep their $27 value, but even if they go down to $1 Trump's holdings would be worth nearly a billion dollars. Not bad for zero work."

    $TRUMP has one utility. It provides a handy measure of people's greed and stupidity, which fluctuate.

  5. FrankM

    Okay, someone explain this to me. How are these different from bitcoins? Are they mined like bitcoins? If not, what are they? How did they create 200 million overnight?

    As an aside, I'd be willing to bet a hundred of these that most of the people buying them know even less about it that I do.

    1. chumpchaser

      Bitcoins are also a scam, but at least some people will accept your bitcoin in exchange for a real object of value. Meme coins only exist as speculation, in the hope that someone dumber than you will buy one from you for more than you paid. But since it starts out with one person (in this case Trump) owning almost all of it, the only people who make money are the original hucksters. So it's not different from Bitcoin, but it is worse.

    2. TheMelancholyDonkey

      You don't mine them. You create 200 million of them overnight by declaring that you've created 200 million of them during the night. You then establish a value by selling some of them. That price gets attributed to all of them, even the ones you haven't sold.

      Yes, it's that stupid. The value of the holdings are unrealized gains, and the probability of ever being to realize them at this initial value is zero.

  6. Justin

    Democrats are criticized for caring too much about moneyed interests so they voted for trump!

    “We have set ourselves up for generational loss because we keep promoting from within leaders that do not criticize the moneyed interests. They refuse to take a hard look at what Americans actually believe and meet those needs.”

    Hammond said that the Democratic leadership erroneously thought it could gloss over core issues, such as anger over the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza, and a thirst for structural economic change which helped drive support for Trump.

    I really no longer give a fuck about these idiots. Structural economic change. Useless people can’t be helped.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/18/democrats-trump-michigan-swing-voters

    1. Justin

      Yeah - fuck these people.

      Charlamagne went on to accuse the Democratic Party of being “leaderless.”

      “Republicans have to show me. I need to see them ruin the country like Democrats say they are going to ruin the country, for me to ever believe anything Democrats have to say ever again,” he continued.

      Ok then. That’s the low bar people have for voting for republicans. Short of ruin, they are content to vote republican. Hilarious

    2. cephalopod

      I think the problem we have is that a large portion of the public wants fascism. They are convinced that the normal solutions of politics don't work anymore, they believe that the culture is devolving into hedonistic decadence, and they see threats from outside forces within their own country. That is the recipe for fascism to start to grow.

      In the past fascism has gained power because conservatives put it in power - they would rather have fascism than let unions/socialists win. And we can see that happening today with the GOP. Much of the public loves it, because it finally feels like a "tough guy" is in charge, and things will get done.

      The main difference with early 20th century Italy and Germany is that Trump isn't a fascist. He's too narcissistic and focused on padding his own pockets to subscribe to the same passions that animated past fascist leaders. He couldn't care less about actually expanding the US outward. All his talk about Greenland and Panama is just talk, designed to get him attention and accolades from the kind of people who want fascist expansionism. He also isn't interested in the kind of subservience to the state that a fascist regime requires. Trump only cares about loyalty to him personally, not loyalty to any sort of ideal of America (however hideous that ideal might be).

      BUT, and this is the important part, Trump is perfectly happy to let all sorts of fascists take positions of power in his administration. At the same time, he's mostly going to run the country as a kleptocrat. This is going to result in absolute economic disaster. Trump will be taking as much money as he can, and the people he puts in charge of the economy and legal system are going to want to implement their crazy plans for massive tariffs, mass deportations, etc.

      For a while the stock market will like it. Companies that are willing to play along with the new system of slavish pandering and bribes will see their profits explode. Regular people will be screwed over, and they will eventually figure it out.

      I doubt that people will switch to the Democrats, though. They'll be too mad that the Democrats "let" this happen to them. But many will stop voting at all for a few decades, having become completely disgusted with "politics." That might be enough to let Democrats win some elections.

      1. Justin

        Why do people want fascism? I don’t know. What does that accomplish for them? Ok… get rid of the illegals and the trannies. Get the uppity non whites to shut up. The people in the guardian article are incoherent. There’s no solution.

  7. J. Frank Parnell

    With Donald it's just one scam after another. Why did he decide he wanted to be president? Because he realized what other presidents either didn't think about or didn't care about, that the presidency could be used to launch scams on a whole new larger scale.

    1. FrankM

      That's exactly what this is. You see where this is going, don't you?

      "Nice little meatpacking business you have here. It would be a shame if all your workers got deported. Oh, so you agree to buy a million dollars of our coins? I wouldn't worry about your workers being bothered."

  8. Dana Decker

    I would like to see Kevin discuss cryptocurrency more generally. I believe he is a strong skeptic of the whole concept. I am too, partly because I don't understand what makes them so special. Blockchain? Whoop-de-doo!

    Look at a log log chart for Bitcoin. It's remarkable. Nearly a straight line. Not sure what that means in terms of "investor" engagement, but it is striking. Seems unsustainable, but these kind of frenzies can last longer than you would think. (I was around during the dot-com bubble and got burned shorting Yahoo.)

    https://bsky.app/profile/titaniumbird.bsky.social/post/3lfzkxydnx22y

      1. Dana Decker

        Yes, for power functions like y = a * x^k

        Eyeballing the chart, it looks like the trajectory is y = x^1, or y = x (x is time, y is price), which means the price keeps increasing linearly. What I don't see is why it's following that trajectory. It seems unmoored from fundamentals (of any sort). Just goin' up because everyone expects it to? I guess so.

    1. Josef

      Dictators love to have their images altered to match their perception of themselves. Think Hitler on a horse wearing armor.

  9. Josef

    "Trump Memes are intended to function as an expression of support for, and engagement with, the ideals and beliefs embodied by the symbol "$TRUMP" and the associated artwork, and are not intended to be, or to be the subject of, an investment opportunity, investment contract, or security of any type." So is it a crypto currency or is it more like an NFT? Does bit coin have the same type of disclosure?

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