Trump triumphant again.
Donald Trump’s surprise pre-inauguration meme coin launch has seen the crypto’s value surge this week while giving Solana a lift, pushing it to a new all-time high. Other major meme coins haven’t been so lucky, however. Dogecoin, the original and still highest value meme coin by market cap, is broadly down.
DOGE dropped more than 15 per cent in aftermath of TRUMP’s launch on Friday, January 17th. It’s fallen from USD 0.4319, its highest price in over a month, to USD 0.37 at time of writing. It remains up 12 per cent for the week thanks to gains achieved over the past seven days.
Other notable meme coins have taken a Trump-triggered hit, with Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) sinking 19 per cent after reaching an all-time high over the weekend. Dogwifhat (WIF) is also down more than 10 per cent, while Pepe (PEPE) has dropped by 7 per cent.
Data from CoinGecko had the broader crypto market down about three percent on Monday, January 20th. Bitcoin held fast at around USD 104,510 after touching another all-time high of USD 108,784. XRP was also inching up as the 47th President’s Inauguration ceremony was set to begin, rising about three percent.
At time of writing, TRUMP had fallen back to about USD 42.25 from its post inauguration high of 47.98 on Tuesday, January 21st. It’s decent began after Sunday’s surprise launch of an official Melania Trump branded coin tied to the new First Lady.
Fates intertwined
Dogecoin suffered its last precipitous fall back in 2022 after newly-installed Twitter CEO Elon Musk asked followers if he should step down from the chief executive role.
The response was resoundingly negative, with roughly 59 per cent voting for his departure and Dogecoin’s price sinking 10 per cent in a matter of hours. DOGE, one of Musk’s pet enthusiasms immediately started losing value. It added to the pounding crypto markets were taking due to fears of a recession and the widening fallout from the collapse of crypto exchange FTX.
Both traditional and crypto financial markets felt the heat. Bitcoin and Ethereum both dropped precipitously while the Dow Jones Industrial Average, NASDAQ, and S&P 500 all started the period down by one to two percent. Major stock indices all hovered around their six-week lows.
DOGE had been on a different path as its price rose after Musk bought Twitter in October. When Musk officially purchased Twitter on 27 October DOGE’s price was USD 0.07. By 1st November it had doubled to USD 0.14. It’s been on a see-saw ride ever since.
That was still a far cry from its May 2021 all-time high of USD 0.72. That happened when Musk appeared on US comedy show Saturday Night Live.
DOGE’s impact on politics finance, and current affairs is far from over. It was originally launched as a joke in 2013 by developer Jackson Palmer and established itself as the first ‘meme-coin.’ Markets didn’t take it seriously until Musk began to tout its utility.
Today, Musk is head of the newly created ‘DOGE’ government waste watchdog.