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Yes, you’re reading that correctly.
Meme Streak
President-elect Donald Trump may have spent his career playing the role of a wheeler-dealer businessman, but his actual financial track record has always been dodgy — he inherited a vast sum, declared bankruptcy at ventures ranging from a hotel to a casino, and estimates of his wealth have been a frequent topic of speculation for decades.
Underscoring that tenuous real-world performance, it appears that Trump has now accumulated vastly more wealth in the past 24 hours than he did in his entire life previously. Yes, you’re reading that correctly: since launching a meme coin called $TRUMP on the eve of his second presidency about a day ago, Axios estimated earlier today that 89 percent of Trump’s net worth was tied up in the cryptocurrency, putting it north of $60 billion and making him — on paper, at least — one of the world’s 25 richest people.
In a preview of Trump’s certain-to-be-chaotic adventures in the world of blockchain, though, the coin subsequently crashed by about 50 percent — meaning it still represents the overwhelming majority of Trump’s worth, but makes him substantially poorer than he was this morning.
Wallet Inspector
We should point out that none of this is remotely fair in any normal sense of the word; the only reason for $TRUMP’s explosive growth is the fact that Trump is about to be sworn in as the 47th president of the United States.
In that position, two things will be true. First, Trump will have immense regulatory power over the crypto industry; after slamming the tech for years, he reversed his position when it became financially convenient to him, and has now nominated crypto advocate Paul Atkins as head of the Securities and Exchange Commission. And second, any wealthy people who need a favor from Trump will now be able to buy caches of his meme coin to earn influence.
Add it all up, and the whole thing reeks to high heaven. Trump’s crypto isn’t shooting up in value because of any intrinsic technical or business acumen; it’s doing so because investors believe — rightly, in all likelihood — that it will be a lucrative conflict of interest over the next four years.
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