Trump token ‘sets the tone’ for new era
Trump’s token is setting the “tone” for crypto, Empire co-host Santiago Santos said
Anna Moneymaker / Shutterstock modified by Blockworks
This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.
David was right yesterday, TRUMP is so much more than a memecoin.
Empire co-host Santiago Santos, in an Empire livestream last night, said that the launch “sets the tone,” and, honestly, I agree.
“One of Trump’s superpowers is that he has the unbelievable ability to read the room at scale, and he has a really good sense of what people want from him and what’s going to resonate with people,” Blockworks co-founder Mike Ippolito said on the stream.
About recent memecoin launches, I’ve seen and heard a lot of comparisons to ICOs back in 2017. That comparison makes sense, but there’s a slightly different one I want to make today, so bear with me.
As this played out over the weekend, I was quietly watching markets for Trump’s coin. For some reason, I couldn’t help but see similarities to the GameStop-driven memestock (or momentum stocks, IYKYK) craze around Covid.
It’s not a perfect comparison, and I’m well aware of that, but the hype and appetite over the weekend brought me right back to 2021.
With TRUMP, there wasn’t a Reddit post that started the snowball effect, and the leader of the free world is very different from GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen in terms of both celebrity and power.
Still, it was clear in how people interacted with TRUMP. I heard from folks that they were jumping into Trump’s token merely for the vibe (and the hope of making some generational wealth).
The lack of communication from Trump or his team regarding the token gave me weird flashbacks — when people took cryptic tweets Cohen’s account as a surefire sign that he was going to make GameStop great again.
Santos thinks that if Trump’s team had been more transparent, there might’ve been a different reaction to the MELANIA token (ICYMI, TRUMP tanked after the Melania token was announced before regaining a little).
Although, I suspect there would’ve been a leg down no matter what, considering people were certain to still be left wondering what the hell was happening.
Ippolito’s concern is that this erodes some of the hard-earned trust that crypto is trying to earn back post-FTX. Whether or not that’s the case, discussions I had with non-crypto people this weekend suggest some folks have a hard time looking past the meme of it all.
On the positive front: “Crypto is showing how much legs it has in terms of being a new capital market,” Ippolito said. And that is one of the most interesting aspects of TRUMP. Perhaps, like the team behind the Trump token said to Jason Yanowitz, the token really is a movement.
Either way, this whole saga has started conversations about the potential for more of these types of political or celebrity tokens. But we also need to keep dialogue open about the effects they may have on crypto.
There’s always a place for memes in crypto. Let’s not become the meme.
Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:
- Blockworks Daily: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.
- Empire: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.
- Forward Guidance: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.
- 0xResearch: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.
- Lightspeed: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto’s hottest networks.
- The Drop: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.
- Supply Shock: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.
