In the realm of political meme coins, at least, Donald Trump has established a clear lead against Joe Biden.
Recently, as the November U.S. presidential election approaches and the bitter rivals get ready for their first public debate, the volume and value of cryptocurrency tokens associated with the former president Trump have skyrocketed.
The market value of all of the so-called “PolitiFi” tokens is rather small—roughly $1 billion. Most of those are associated with Trump, who has positioned himself as an advocate for cryptocurrencies despite providing no details about his proposed policies.
Only one of the top 10 political meme coins by market value, Jeo Boden, is connected to President Biden, according to statistics from cryptocurrency platform CoinGecko. Seven of the coins are based on Trump, several of which play on his Make America Great Again slogan.
Launched in late August 2023, MAGA, the largest coin associated with a political figure, trades on exchanges under the ticker TRUMP. Its market worth increased from almost nothing at the beginning of the year to as much as $775 million in June.
In contrast, Jeo Boden debuted in March of this year and within days reached a peak value of $648 million before progressively declining to $87 million.
According to Forrest Przybysz, CEO of Sistine Research and cryptocurrency trader, meme coins are inherently very speculative and influenced by attention cycles.
“A token’s price will typically increase in proportion to the level of attention it can capture and sustain,” he continued. “Trump draws a lot of attention. He is therefore the perfect topic for a meme token.”
“We should expect price and speculation on a Trump-based meme token to rise as we get closer to the election.”
Political tokens make up a small portion of the $46 billion market value of meme coins, which are, according to Coingecko estimates, a narrow subset of the larger $2.3 trillion cryptocurrency market. Meme coins are hyper-speculative, volatile, and hazardous cryptocurrencies that are frequently motivated by online jokes.
Some tokens have unclear origins, and traders who are concerned about a “rug pull”—where investors buy in shady projects only to discover the coin’s developers have disappeared with the money—discuss these issues on social media.
Eight of the top 10 most popular political tokens this year were released between May and June, according to CoinGecko. These tokens usually try to take advantage of the increasing interest in political leaders before elections.
“In that they are somewhat of a collector’s item, meme coins are comparable to nonfungible tokens. Co-founder of the cryptocurrency research company Delphi Digital Yan Liberman explained, “The idea is that you monetize public attention.”
Trading these tokens is more difficult stated than done, though. The largest centralized exchanges, like Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) or Binance, mention very few, if any, of them. The majority of tokens are exchanged on smaller exchanges in pairs, either ether or solana; they usually trade for pennies on the dollar and have a market value of less than $100 million.
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According to national opinion polls, Biden and Trump are virtually tied. Five months before the election on November 5, the presidential debate between the two contenders on Thursday will be crucial.
On the cryptocurrency website Polymarket, where users wager stablecoins on upcoming events, traders were placing bets with a 59% chance that Republican challenger Trump will defeat Democratic incumbent Joe Biden.
With their sarcastic or amusing names, political tokens capitalize on the popularity of political individuals to gain traction. According to Liberman of Delphi Digital, “funny is certainly an authentic big driving force of which tokens do well.”
In his name, Trump has not stated that he supports or favors any cryptocurrency coin. But among these tokens, his criticism of Democratic attempts to control the industry has increased his support, according to Liberman.
Tens of millions of dollars are being spent by the larger cryptocurrency sector on behalf of candidates who support cryptocurrencies before the US election. The story stated that the $2 million bitcoin gift made by investor twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss in support of Trump was returned since it exceeded the federal legal maximum.
According to Bitfinex analysts, “these tokens have turned into speculative assets themselves in terms of the election results.”
