Donald Trump and Bitcoin: From ‘Not a Fan’ to Crypto President—With His Own Meme Coin

Bitcoin-friendly Donald Trump won the election in November, and was inaugurated Monday as the 47th President of the United States of America. But away of being fully sworn in, the commander in chief dropped a joke gold on Friday.

Yes, you read that right. Running on the Solana community, the Republican gift already has a market cap of over$ 8 billion, putting it among the 30 most valuable pennies on the market. The shift signaled the approaching President’s growing excitement for the online resource room after campaigning to support Bitcoiners and the fast-moving sphere as a whole.

Trump branded himself as a crypto-friendly prospect ahead of November’s contentious election, bringing in millions of dollars in income and modern property donations from Silicon Valley technology leaders. And next he won.

But it was n’t always like this: President Trump was previously a fervent bitcoin writer. So how did we get these?

Trump’s most fundamental first comment on crypto dates back to 2019, when as leader he made it clear he did n’t like Bitcoin.  

“ I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are not wealth, and whose value is extremely dangerous and based on thin air, ” he said on Twitter at the time, before slamming Facebook’s ideas for a modern money.  

“We have just one real money in the USA, and it is stronger than ever, both dependable and trustworthy, ” he added. “It is by far the most prominent dollar anywhere in the world, and it will always stay that way. It is called the United States dollars! ”

Trump reiterated his ideas during a Blockchain bull run in 2021. “Bitcoin really seems like a con, ” he said on , repeating that he wanted the money to be the world’s top dollar.

Entering the Hydroponic earth

It took a long time for him to directly claim he liked the best bitcoin, and the trip started with an improbable crypto trend: NFT items.  

By the end of 2021, after Trump had left the White House, his wife Melania announced her ideas for a Solana-based NFT series.   Solana Labs clarified that it had nothing to do with the collection launching on the blockchain, and Trump continued to slam crypto as “dangerous ” despite his wife’s venture.  

The next year, however, the commander-in-chief launched his own NFT series. Minted on Ethereum scaling system Square, the online trading card collection was at first ridiculed—but it also sold away quickly and made millions of dollars.  

Trump later said that he only launched the collection because he thought they were “sort of cute. ” He has since launched more collections on Polygon, and even minted some of the third set on Bitcoin via the Ordinals protocol. A fourth collection launched in August 2024 with the largest number of NFTs to date.

Trump has even claimed that the success of his NFT collections, and the surprising number of buyers who used cryptocurrency rather than fiat currency, helped change his perspective on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.

A digital wallet tied to the President by blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence shows that he has raked in millions in royalties from the NFTs—and also holds some of the biggest unofficial Trump meme coins, which likely were sent to the wallet without Trump’s knowledge or consent.

Trump’s crypto embrace

But it was just last year when Trump really upped the pro-crypto talk. “ I make money with it, I have fun with it too, ” Trump said in a March interview with CNBC’s . “Crazy new currencies, that ’s what I call them. ”

Then, while hosting holders of his NFTs at his Mar-a-Lago resort in May, he told the crowd he was “good with ” crypto—and slammed Biden and the Democrats for being “against it. ” Many saw the event as a turning point in crypto policy conversations.

Rumors spread in May that the world’s richest man and biggest donor to the Trump campaign, Elon Musk, has been advising the presidential hopeful on a crypto strategy. ( Musk denied the reports. ) In July, the Republican party issued a draft party platform that explicitly mentioned crypto—a first for the industry.

After surviving an assassination attempt in July, the business mogul and former reality TV star earned Musk’s public endorsement, as well as support from many other prominent names in the digital asset space. And major crypto figures like the Winklevoss twins of Gemini and Kraken founder Jesse Powell donated sizable sums to Trump.

Trump then selected Senator J. D. Vance as his pick for running mate, with the Vice President seen at the time as a pro-crypto candidate who previously disclosed Bitcoin holdings of between$ 100,000 and$ 250,000 back in 2021.

But the most tangible sign of Trump’s embrace of crypto came when he spoke at the 2024 Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, Tennessee. There, he promised the crowd that he would build a “strategic Bitcoin stockpile ” for the country and that his plan was to turn the U. S. into the “crypto capital of the planet. ”

The Trump family then teased a decentralized finance ( DeFi ) project dubbed World Liberty Financial, with Trump himself posting multiple social media teasers during the initial rollout.

The ex-President’s son Donald Jr. has hinted that the crypto platform will be egalitarian. “For too long, the average American has been squeezed by the big banks and financial elites. It’s time we take a stand—together, ” he said on Twitter (aka X ).

Then, a day after the second attempt on his life, Trump launched the project during a live interview with Rug Radio ( ’s sister company ). World Liberty Financial aims to offer borrowing and lending services for cryptocurrencies on Ethereum’s network.

As crypto token launches go, the project was a bit of a flop right out of the gate, only managing to sell 4 % of its allotted tokens during its launch. But since then, another 67 % of the 20 billion tokens have been snatched up, with over$ 200 million in sales, according to Dune data.

And the project has bold plans: Sources told  Decrypt revealed that plans for a stablecoin are in the works. A stablecoin is a digital token backed by something stable—typically the U. S dollar.

The Republican hopeful also has more crypto people on his team. Bitcoin bull Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his campaign to endorse Trump, and then joined Trump’s transition team. He has been nominated as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Orange-pilled Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick is also part of Trump’s political squad, and will serve as Secretary of Commerce in the incoming administration.

Meanwhile, noted Dogecoin fan Elon Musk will co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency ( DOGE ) with fellow billionaire and Bitcoin fan Vivek Ramaswamy, with the agency set to propose substantial government budget cuts and layoffs.

Trump in September became the first current or former President of the U. S. —that we know of—to have used Bitcoin to buy something: At the popular crypto bar in New York City, PubKey, the ex-President bought a burger using the cryptocurrency.

“It’s the beginning of a new era, ” he said, referring to the digital asset industry.

And on Friday, he officially launched a meme coin running on Solana. People at first thought it was a joke, but the token is now the third largest meme cryptocurrency in existence—and will be listed by major exchanges Binance and Coinbase. His wife then launched her own MELANIA meme coin two days later, crashing the price of TRUMP in the process.