Donald Trump Nods to Token’s Billions in First Address Since Launch

TRUMP memecoin riches have spurred billions of dollars for the newly sworn-in U.S. President Donald Trump, an amount he termed as “peanuts” compared to corporate bigwigs in his first address of the token since launch.

“I don’t know much about it other than when I launched it. I heard it was successful,” Trump said in a press conference on Tuesday when asked by a reporter. “Where is it today? Several billion?

“That’s peanuts for these guys,” he added, referring to the networth of other businessmen in the room that included SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Oracle’s Larry Ellison.

Token prices zoomed 25% in the past 24 hours, beating gains in bitcoin (BTC) and other majors, to reverse losses from earlier in the week. It sits at an $8 billion market capitalization as of Wednesday morning, up nearly 900% since going live.

Trump also unveiled a $500 billion joint venture termed Stargate at the event, which aims to build data centers in Texas and would invest in AI infrastructure.

Meanwhile, some see TRUMP as a bet on the Republican’s popularity and policies in his term, with ripple effects on how it may shape up Web3 and memecoin markets.

“Longer term, TRUMP coin could act as a barometer for public sentiment towards Trump’s presidency,” Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands told CoinDesk in a message. “Culture memes and tokens are essentially a highly variable public polymarket of culture and zeitgeist, and we’ve seen this play out accordingly.”

“(However) If the initiative is perceived as a cash grab without further engagement, we may well see a crypto chill for meme tokens, potentially draining attention and liquidity out of the meme space. How the TRUMP token is handled is likely to have a ripple effect on trust and reputation for the entire crypto and Web3 industry,” Siu added.