Bitcoin (BTC) suffered losses during Asian trading hours on Monday, amid frenzied trading of TRUMP and MELANIA memecoins.
The leading cryptocurrency by market value briefly fell below $100,000, representing a 24-hour decline of 4.5%. ETH, XRP, SOL and BNB saw larger losses, with ADA and DOGE losing more than 10%, according to data sources CoinDesk and Coingecko.
TRUMP, the memecoin tied to President-elect Donald Trump, which debuted Saturday, fell 30% to $49, as Trump’s wife Melania launched her own memecoin, MELANIA.
“The official Melania Meme is live! You can buy $MELANIA now,” Melania Trump posted on social platform X on Sunday. The meme coin’s website describes the token as a fungible cryptocurrency created and tracked on the blockchain Solana.
The MELANIA token rose 24,000% to a record price of $13, supposedly sucking liquidity out of TRUMP coin, which was the most traded digital asset on Binance over the weekend.
According to some observers, the frenzied trading of TRUMP and MELANIA coins represents the FOMO phase of the bull market and could lead to notable BTC price action.
Meanwhile, others, like Arca CIO Jeff Dorman, believe TRUMP’s debut is a green light for all possibilities.
“To begin with, the reluctance for over 3 years from potential token issuers and potential investors in the US has been “regulatory concerns”. This is now completely eradicated when the President himself is both issuer and investor,” Dorman said on X.
“The TRUMP token has just signaled to every business, municipality, university, and individual brand that crypto can now be used as a capital formation and customer bootstrapping mechanism,” Dorman added.
Meanwhile, Trump is widely expected to sign an executive order announcing the creation of a strategic Bitcoin reserve on day one.
