Bitcoin-friendly Donald Trump won the election in November, and was inaugurated in January as the 47th President of the United States of America. But ahead of being formally sworn in, the commander in chief dropped a meme coin.
Yes, you read that right. Running on the Solana network, the TRUMP token at one point had a market cap of $14 billion. It’s since plunged to $1.8 billion but the move signaled the new President’s growing enthusiasm for the digital asset space after campaigning to help Bitcoiners and the fast-moving sphere as a whole.
Trump branded himself as a crypto-friendly candidate ahead of November’s divisive election, bringing in millions of dollars in cash and digital asset donations from Silicon Valley tech leaders. And then he won.
But it wasn’t always like this: President Trump was once a staunch crypto critic. So how did we get here?
I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air. Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 12, 2019
Trump’s most defining early comment on cryptocurrency dates back to 2019, when as president he made it clear he didn’t like Bitcoin.
“I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air,” he said on Twitter at the time, before slamming Facebook’s plans for a digital currency.
“We have only one real currency in the USA, and it is stronger than ever, both dependable and reliable,” he added. “It is by far the most dominant currency anywhere in the world, and it will always stay that way. It is called the United States dollar!”
Trump reiterated his beliefs during a Bitcoin bull run in 2021. “Bitcoin just seems like a scam,” he said on Fox Business, repeating that he wanted the dollar to be the world’s top currency.
Entering the NFT world
It took a long time for him to explicitly say he liked the top cryptocurrency, and the journey started with an unlikely crypto craze: NFT collectibles.
By the end of 2021, after Trump had left the White House, his wife Melania announced her plans for a Solana-based NFT collection. Solana Labs clarified that it had nothing to do with the collection launching on the blockchain, and Trump continued to slam crypto as “dangerous” despite his wife’s venture.
Excited for this new venture, which combines my passion for art and commitment to helping our Nation’s children fulfill their own unique American Dream. #MelaniaNFT https://t.co/XJN18tMllg pic.twitter.com/wMpmDDsQdp
— MELANIA TRUMP (@MELANIATRUMP) December 16, 2021
The next year, however, the commander-in-chief launched his own NFT collection. Minted on Ethereum scaling network Polygon, the digital trading card collection was at first ridiculed—but it still sold out quickly and made millions of dollars.
Trump later said that he only launched the collection because he thought they were “sort of cute.” He has since launched more collections on Polygon, and even minted some of the third set on Bitcoin via the Ordinals protocol. A fourth collection launched in August 2024 with the largest number of NFTs to date.
Trump has even claimed that the success of his NFT collections, and the surprising number of buyers who used cryptocurrency rather than fiat currency, helped change his perspective on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
A digital wallet tied to the President by blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence shows that he has raked in millions in royalties from the NFTs—and also holds some of the biggest unofficial Trump meme coins, which likely were sent to the wallet without Trump’s knowledge or consent.
Trump’s crypto embrace
But it was just last year when Trump really upped the pro-crypto talk. “I make money with it, I have fun with it too,” Trump said in a March interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box. “Crazy new currencies, that’s what I call them.”
Then, while hosting holders of his NFTs at his Mar-a-Lago resort in May, he told the crowd he was “good with” crypto—and slammed Biden and the Democrats for being “against it.” Many saw the event as a turning point in crypto policy conversations.
Rumors spread in May 2024 that the world’s richest man and biggest donor to the Trump campaign, Elon Musk, had been advising the presidential hopeful on a crypto strategy. (Musk denied the reports.) In July, the Republican party issued a draft party platform that explicitly mentioned crypto—a first for the industry.
After surviving an assassination attempt in July, the business mogul and former reality TV star earned Musk’s public endorsement, as well as support from many other prominent names in the digital asset space. And major crypto figures like the Winklevoss twins of Gemini and Kraken founder Jesse Powell donated sizable sums to Trump.
Trump then selected Senator J.D. Vance as his pick for running mate, with the Vice President seen at the time as a pro-crypto candidate who previously disclosed Bitcoin holdings of between $100,000 and $250,000 back in 2021.
But the most tangible sign of Trump’s embrace of crypto came when he spoke at the 2024 Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, Tennessee. There, he promised the crowd that he would build a “strategic Bitcoin stockpile” for the country and that his plan was to turn the U.S. into the “crypto capital of the planet.”
The Trump family then teased a decentralized finance (DeFi) project dubbed World Liberty Financial, with Trump himself posting multiple social media teasers during the initial rollout.
.@worldlibertyfi pic.twitter.com/mwhVIzPJyq
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 29, 2024
The President’s son Donald Jr. said that the crypto platform will be egalitarian. “For too long, the average American has been squeezed by the big banks and financial elites. It’s time we take a stand—together,” he said on Twitter (aka X).
Then, a day after the second attempt on his life, Trump launched the project during a live interview with Rug Radio (Decrypt’s sister company). World Liberty Financial aims to offer borrowing and lending services for cryptocurrencies on Ethereum’s network.
As crypto token launches go, the project was a bit of a flop right out of the gate, only managing to sell 4% of its allotted tokens during its launch. But sales ticked up substantially ahead of Trump’s inauguration, with the rest of the allotment selling out on January 20—the day he returned to the White House.
Decrypt then reported that the World Liberty Financial project had launched its own stablecoin. On-chain data shows the token is available on both Ethereum and Binance’s BNB Chain.
The Republican also has more crypto people on his team. Bitcoin bull Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his campaign to endorse Trump, and then joined Trump’s transition team. Now he’s the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Orange-pilled Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick is also part of Trump’s political squad, now serving as Secretary of Commerce.
Elsewhere, noted Dogecoin fan Elon Musk led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a program to slash budgets and cut jobs across the government. He has since stepped down from the roll amid a messy, public break-up with Trump.
Crypto ambitions grow
Trump in September became the first current or former President of the U.S.—that we know of—to have used Bitcoin to buy something: At the popular New York City crypto bar, PubKey, the ex-President bought a burger using the cryptocurrency.
“It’s the beginning of a new era,” he said, referring to the digital asset industry. And it wasn’t just talk: On January 17, he launched a meme coin running on Solana, and the token is now one of the most valuable meme coins in existence.
The TRUMP token launch has been widely criticized by politicians and analysts, and is seen by some as a potential avenue for corruption. But while the price is down sharply from the peak, it has continued to see trading demand, including in April when Trump revealed plans to host an exclusive dinner for top TRUMP holders.
Trump’s exclusive dinner—held in May for the top 220 holders of the meme coin—was a quaint event, according to attendees who spoke to Decrypt, and the president only made a brief appearance. VIP attendees, who got a special tour alongside access to the event, held an average of $4.8 million worth of TRUMP to get a top spot at the party.
But the Republican, in his first five months in office, has made other, more serious campaign pledges a reality: He established a strategic Bitcoin reserve and became the first president to sign a crypto-related bill into law—ending the IRS’s so-called DeFi broker rule, which could have imperiled the development of crypto apps in America.
Trump’s SEC has also scrapped numerous lawsuits and against crypto companies from the previous administration, and his family is continuing to—albeit controversially—push ahead with its own crypto ventures: Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump are launching American Bitcoin, a collaboration with Bitcoin mining firm Hut8 that plans to become the “world’s largest and most efficient Bitcoin miner.”
The Trump sons are also planning to launch a crypto wallet via their World Liberty Financial project. Initially, the TRUMP meme coin team said it would launch its own Trump-themed wallet, but that plan was canceled after a public (but short-lived) dispute with Eric, Barron, and Don Jr. (The Trump family, interestingly, appears to have recently reduced its stake in World Liberty.)
Trump’s media company Trump Media and Technology Group in March also signed an agreement to team with Crypto.com to offer ETFs, with Trump Media itself planning to invest its own money into the products.
Trump Media has plans to launch a spot Bitcoin ETF in the U.S., after NYSE Arca filed paperwork to list the “Truth Social Bitcoin ETF” from Yorkville America Digital. A Truth Social-branded joint Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF is also in the works. On top of all that, Trump Media raised more than $2.3 billion to establish its own Bitcoin treasury.
Trump critics have argued that the president’s digital asset ventures constitute a conflict of interest; Silicon Valley bigwigs say he’s pro-innovation. One thing is for sure, though: President Trump appears to be going all-in on crypto, shrugging off his past perspective on the industry.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
Editor’s note: This story was originally published on July 19, 2024 and last updated with new info on June 23, 2025.
