Last Friday, just days before President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, he introduced his own cryptocurrency, a meme coin called $TRUMP. Amid the pomp and circumstance, the coin’s value surged by more than 300 percent over the weekend. As of Thursday, the market capitalization of $TRUMP is around $7 billion with only 200 million of the 1 billion tokens released so far. The remaining 800 million tokens are held by Fight Fight Fight and CIC Digital, affiliates of the Trump Organization. At the current value of the coin, Trump’s total stake exceeds $30 billion, more than three times his estimated net worth of $7.5 to $10 billion, although this is all hypothetical.
Meme coins often disappear as quickly as they rise in value, leaving misled investors holding the bag. Perhaps this is why $TRUMP’s website includes a disclaimer stating that the coin is considered artwork. It is not intended to be an investment opportunity, contract, or any form of investment.
In a LinkedIn post on Tuesday, Georg Bak, a digital art advisor and co-founder of The Digital Art Mile art fair, pointed out the disclaimer and suggested that Trump had created the most expensive artwork in the world. The meme coin, he claimed, is valued much higher than Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, which sold for $450 million in 2017. Bak stated that each holder of $TRUMP is a legitimate co-owner of the most valuable artwork in the world.
After seeing Bak’s post, ARTnews asked the advisor why Trump might have categorized the coin as art. Bak speculated that the decision likely had more to do with legal protections than Trump’s desire to be an artist. By labeling $TRUMP as art, the issuers can argue that it is not an investment vehicle but rather a collectible or creative expression.
In summary, by designating the coin as artwork, the creators of $TRUMP shift its primary purpose away from financial speculation and potentially away from regulatory scrutiny. Other celebrity-led coins have taken a similar approach to avoid being classified as securities. Mit $TRUMP und anderen Meme-Münzen gibt es nur das Token. Am Wochenende gab es viel Aufregung über $TRUMP, aber es ist unwahrscheinlich, dass wir das letzte Mal davon gehört haben. Am Sonntag startete First Lady Melania Trump ihre eigene Meme-Münze, $MELANIA, die sich ebenfalls als Kunstwerk bezeichnet. Es hat derzeit eine Marktkapitalisierung von $474,5 Millionen. Trump schien größtenteils ahnungslos über die Münze zu sein und sagte Reportern diese Woche: „Ich weiß nicht viel darüber, außer dass ich sie gestartet habe, außer dass sie sehr erfolgreich war.“ Die Organisation hinter $TRUMP hat nicht auf Anfragen von ARTnews geantwortet, warum die Münze genau als Kunstwerk deklariert wurde.