Bitcoin (BTC) nursed losses in Monday’s Asian opening amid frenzied trading in memecoins TRUMP and MELANIA.
The leading cryptocurrency by market cap briefly fell below $100,000, representing a 4.5% drop on a 24-hour basis. ETH, XRP, SOL and BNB reported bigger losses, with ADA and DOGE losing over 10%, according to data sources CoinDesk and Coingecko.
TRUMP, the memecoin associated with President-elect Donald Trump that debuted Saturday, dropped 30% to $49 as Trump’s wife, Melania, launched her own memecoin, MELANIA.
“The official Melania Meme is live! You can buy $MELANIA now,” Melania Trump wrote Sunday on social platform X. The meme coin’s website describes the token as a fungible cryptocurrency created and tracked on the Solana blockchain.
The MELANIA token surged a staggering 24,000% to a record price of $13, reportedly siphoning liquidity from the TRUMP coin, which was the most traded digital asset on Binance over the weekend.
According to some observers, the frenzied trading of TRUMP and MELANIA coins represents the FOMO phase of the bull market and could lead to a remarkable BTC price action.
Meanwhile, others like Arcas CIO Jeff Dorman believe that the debut with TRUMP is a green light for all possibilities.
“For starters, the pushback for 3+ years from both potential token issuers and potential investors in the US has been ‘regulatory concerns’. This is now completely eradicated when the president himself is both issuer and investor,” Dorman said on X .
“The TRUMP token has just signaled to every business, municipality, university and individual brand that crypto can now be used as a capital formation and customer startup mechanism.,” Dorman added.
Meanwhile, expectations are rife that Trump will sign an executive order on the first day announcing the creation of a strategic bitcoin reserve.
