👉 Background: On January 20th 2025, Donald Trump was officially sworn in as the 47th President of the US. But it wasn’t the inauguration that had crypto bros frothing — it was Trump's tweet last Friday that he had released a new crypto coin called $TRUMP.

👉 What happened: Following his endorsement, the value of the $TRUMP coin soared higher than his hair on a breezy evening. In fact, it jumped to a market cap of more than $72 billion USD. And that meant that Trump’s personal wealth from the coin was more than $50 billion USD on paper…or more than 7x his total worth just from its creation from 48 hours earlier.

👉 What else: But then on Sunday night, Trump’s wife, Melania got in on the fun with her own crypto coin called $Melania. And while her coin soared to more than $5 billion in value, it also halved $Trump’s coin. And while many investors (including Trump) made significant sums on this meme-coin-mania, many others lost just as much.

What's the key learning?

💡Meme coins are cryptocurrencies that originate from an internet meme. They're crypto-coins built to ride the wave of internet trends.

💡The crazy thing about meme coins is that they have no inherent value or utility — these coins don’t solve problems, they don’t offer services and there is no specific technology. It’s all about investing in a cultural moment… with the chance to make (and lose) all of your money.

💡Recently we’ve seen meme coins soar and crash:

• $HAWK coin for the Hawk Tuah girl which jumped to $12.5 million and then crashed in a day
• On the other hand, Pepe the Frog's coin called $PEPE is literally just a frog worth $500 million USD

But as Melania’s website wisely suggests, you should “never invest more than you can afford to lose”.