Trump and its influence: Does the market enter the fanatic stage?

Author: TPan Source: Web3 with TPan Translation: Shan Oba, Golden Finance

Friday, January 17, 2025, 7:30 pm. My wife and I arrived early for Adam Ray 's Dr. Phil Live Show, which started at 8 p.m.

I'm proud of myself because during dinner at 6 o 'clock, I put my phone on silent and didn't check my messages . After arriving at the performance venue, I finally had time to catch up on notifications and updates on X (formerly Twitter).

On X, everyone is discussing one topic:

Did Trump really launch a meme coin? Is this a scam? !

Everyone is running around like headless flies in the digital world, but I am preparing to enjoy the upcoming feast of laughter.

Seeing technical detectives like @cygaar share their findings makes me think it's worth a try. So, I bought some TRUMP . But because the show was about to start, I could only suppress my curiosity and not check my phone.

Apart from the positive news about cryptocurrencies in the past few days, the only similar cases that come to mind are these:

• Bored Ape Yacht Club ’s “ Fuck It. Mutants Saturday ” post;

• Yuga Labs ’ announcement about Otherside (also on a Friday night);

• Azuki’s “ check your wallet ” message when announcing the Beanz airdrop .

To be honest, these cases pale in comparison to today's events. This is the President of the United States, and he is what we are talking about!

Memecoins

Before I continue, I want to mention that I write about meme coins from time to time, especially as the trend continues and grows and the frequency of coverage increases.

Whether we love them or hate them, meme coins have become a phenomenon that cannot be ignored. They are attention-grabbing agents that can achieve ridiculous and volatile valuations, making even empty wallets rich overnight—and certainly making the rich poor overnight.

With meme coin issuance platforms like pump.fun , creating a meme coin now only takes a few minutes. The growth of meme coins has exploded since the platforms launched less than a year ago.

TRUMP’S FIRST IMPACT

Although meme coins have attracted a large number of new users, the phenomenon brought about by TRUMP is on another level entirely:

• By Saturday evening , more than 400,000 new users had joined Moonshot. This is a popular mobile app dedicated to purchasing meme coins and a cooperative issuance platform for the token. Aside from Trump himself, Moonshot may be the biggest winner.

• Moonshot’s daily active users (DAU) exceeded 1 million .

• Moonshot ranks fifth on the iOS top downloads list , with downloads even rivaling those of VPN apps that surged due to the TikTok ban.

• The Crypto.com app, in an effort to improve App Store Optimization (ASO), changed its app title to include “TRUMP” and updated its screenshots to highlight the TRUMP and MELANIA tokens (yes, there’s one with Melania, too) Related meme coins, but we won’t discuss them here, haha).

• Chainalysis published a report on TRUMP and MELANIA token holders with some interesting statistics:

• About 50% of TRUMP/MELANIA token holders have never purchased Solana’s altcoins before (excluding $SOL and the Solana blockchain token for stablecoins).

• Nearly half of buyers created a wallet on the day they purchased the token .

• The vast majority of wallets holding TRUMP/MELANIA are worth less than $100 , indicating a large proportion of retail activity.

There is no doubt that TRUMP has attracted millions of new users that we have been calling for, albeit in a way that many may not like.

No matter how we feel about Trump or the meme coin, hopefully everyone can view this moment with a “glass half full” mentality. As I mentioned in the "Meme Coin Super (User Drainage) Cycle":

NBA Top Shot attracted a large number of new users in February 2021, with more than 80,000 unique buyers in that month alone. Many users eventually switched to NFTs, and some of them later became entrepreneurs, creators, or contributors in the ecosystem. I myself was drawn into it because of the speculation and the potential for big money, as were many others I've met over the past few years.

Love it or hate it, meme coins are introducing a new group of users and classes into our world, which may validate the hypothesis of a meme coin super cycle .

• Some people are using crypto wallets for the first time (luckily, the user onboarding experience is much better now than in the past).

• Some people are starting to learn the concepts of slippage and token swaps.

• Some people may lose all their money and confirm that cryptocurrency is indeed a “scam.”

• And some will stay, wondering what else is going on in this strange world.

This is the beginning of the memecoin super cycle.

Secondary Effects of TRUMP

The secondary effects of Trump’s TRUMP are both worrying and fascinating.

Worrying aspects

Now, a head of state has officially launched a meme coin, which is equivalent to opening all the "Pandora's Box" in the world of meme coins. Or in the words of “meme trenches,” it’s already “crime szn.”

Events over the past few days include:

1. The official account of the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs released 4 meme coins and then rugged them. It's unclear whether this was an internal effort or the work of hackers, but it's likely the latter.

2. Brazilian politician Marco Feliciano ’s account was hacked and a scam meme coin was announced.

3. The Catholic News Service ’s account was hacked and a scam meme coin was posted.

4. Trump’s inauguration prayer pastor received a meme coin and publicly supported it, with proceeds donated to his church.

5. Rumors spread that MrBeast would launch a meme coin, and he had to publicly state that he would not create any meme coins.

The token economic model of the TRUMP meme coin has also attracted attention (relevant information is shared on the website):

The supply in circulation will be 20% in the first 3 months , and 80% of the supply will be released monthly over the remaining 21 months .

No one currently knows how the price of TRUMP will change, but come April, “Creators & CIC Digital” may start putting the tokens on the open market to unsuspecting buyers and currency holders.

Based on these trends, we are likely to see more hacks, fake “official” releases, and scams flooding the market. Everyone must remain vigilant!

Interesting follow-up developments

On the other hand, the launch of TRUMP also triggered some interesting developments:

1. Several asset management companies have applied to launch meme currency ETFs (it is still uncertain whether they will be approved).

2. Trump was asked about his meme coin and responded to it.

3. Mark Cuban criticized TRUMP’s predatory token economic model and proposed a similar model that suggested token proceeds should be used to pay for the U.S. Treasury debt.

4. The founder of Vine launched the VINE meme coin, a social video application that was the predecessor of TikTok and was acquired by Twitter in 2013 and closed in 2016. He echoed Elon Musk's interest in reviving the app and hinted at a surprise release on Vine's birthday.

The latter two points are particularly noteworthy as we see some creators starting to think about potential uses for meme coins beyond attracting attention.

From the traditional model——

“Attract attention → push up prices → sell for profit”

Change to new path:

• Mark Cuban : Attract attention → Drive prices higher → Use proceeds to reduce the US Treasury debt.

• VINE : attract attention → push up prices → ???

Use attention with purpose

What new uses might be possible if the legal gloves were removed from the meme coin and individuals or entities were able to exploit it more creatively?

A simple answer is: we can reuse the NFT model, including promised access rights (such as token gating), decision-making rights, and reward mechanisms.

Balaji shared a hypothetical scenario about TRUMP over the weekend, combining its massive market capitalization with Trump’s massive audience base (excerpt below):

11) One way to solve the incentive problem is for Trump to airdrop some TRUMP tokens to every American citizen. However, he might be able to simply send a personal email to every Trump supporter offering free TRUMP.

12) Specifically, he could give 72 hours' notice so that even Democrats would sign up for his personal mailing list just to get an airdrop.

13) Is this legal? Apparently, it's legal for politicians to send fundraising solicitation emails to their constituents. But as far as I know, no politician has ever tried to “give away money” via personal airdrops, especially one of this magnitude.

14) Based on the current valuation, Trump can issue 100 US dollars worth of locked TRUMP to each of 77 million Trump voters through airdrops, with a total cost of only 7.7 billion US dollars, and these assets were worth zero two days ago . He could even give everyone $500 and still have over $20 billion in remaining assets.

15) Yes, this will cost Trump some assets. But if joining his mailing list is required to claim the tokens, and if the airdrop can be achieved without capital gains tax, it will "pay for itself" by turning his supporter base into even more fervent fans.

16) This may even win him the necessary political support to completely dismantle the Democratic Party's interest network. Basically, by joining Trump’s mailing list and supporting his encryption policies, you can receive a benefit similar to a “basic income” (UBI).

17) If 77 million Americans also benefit from TRUMP, then the conflict of interest charge disappears. It would be a new kind of social contract, a personal relationship between the president and his citizens.

This assumption obviously changes the nature of incentives, especially when the audience size reaches thousands or even millions. This model could open up entirely new avenues for memecoin uses.

The potential of meme coins in this new environment is currently unclear , but emerging ideas and themes will soon surface.

Has the frenzy phase of the cycle begun?

If you ask me, I'd say Friday night seems to herald the beginning of the manic phase of the cycle. But as is the way with these things, no one can predict how long the music will keep ringing, especially with so many positive regulatory changes coming this week.

So, maybe we are still some distance away from true fanaticism.

Here are some signs that “silly season”—a period of heightened speculation and irrationality in markets—has arrived, sparked by the launch of the Trump Meme Coin:

1. On Tuesday, 8 of the top 10 most downloaded financial apps were related to cryptocurrency .

2. “Extreme speculators” (Degens) in the crypto community started taking their parents to the Moonshot app (which is pretty cool in itself!).

3. In the Discord server, I captured such an interesting conversation:

• Someone asked: “How long do you think this craze will last?”

• Another replied: "Just enough for me to buy that Lambo."

Regardless, I will enjoy the new energy in this field.