On the eve of her husband’s inauguration as US president, Melania Trump, the wife of US President-elect Donald Trump, announced the launch of a cryptocurrency on Sunday on the social media platform X.
She wrote, “The Official Melania Meme is live! You can buy $MELANIA now.”
The website for the “Official Melania Meme” stated that it is a cryptocurrency asset created and tracked on the Solana blockchain, and both the $Trump and $Melania coin websites included disclaimers that stated that the money was “not intended to be, or the subject of” an investment opportunity or security.
Trump had previously called cryptocurrency a “scam,” but during the 2024 election campaign, he became the first presidential candidate to accept digital assets as donations, according to the BBC.
Trump also said on the campaign trail that he would create a strategic bitcoin stockpile and appoint financial regulators that take a more positive stance towards digital assets, which sparked expectations that he would remove regulations on the crypto industry.
Following Trump’s victory, bitcoin surged to a record high and is currently trading at around $107,000, according to cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase.