On January 19, 2025, someone paid $75.35 to buy a Trump meme coin. Today, assuming that same investor held the cryptocurrency, the investment has lost 96% of its value.
The crypto market has been more volatile than usual in recent weeks. Last week alone saw daily swings of as much as $10,000 in Bitcoin, the leading digital currency, pushing it down to nearly $60,000, a level not seen since 2024.
Bitcoin has since recovered somewhat, though it is still hovering near $70,000, well below its $122,000 high last October. But as mainstream cryptocurrencies continue to give investors whiplash, meme coin holders have fared even worse.
The Trump coin, in midmorning trading on Monday, stood at $3.39, according to CoinMarketCap. The Melania coin, which once traded as high as $13.73, is down roughly 99%, changing hands for about 12 cents.
The drop in the Trump coin comes roughly a year after it began to lose investor support following Trump’s inauguration. Last February, the coin’s market capitalization stood at $3.5 billion, already well below its $14.5 billion peak on the eve of his second inauguration. Today, it has fallen to $1.78 billion.
Nonpolitical meme coins have also seen steep declines. Dogecoin, which once flirted with $1 per coin, is now trading at just over 9 cents. That represents a 25% decline year to date and a 68% drop since last September.
Shiba Inu now costs $0.000006060, meaning that buying 1,650 coins today would cost just under one cent—a 20% drop from its highs last October. Losses over the past week span the broader meme coin market: Pepe fell 13%, Bonk dropped 16%, Pudgy Penguins declined 20%, and Pippin slid 35%. (No, we didn’t make any of those names up, and no, it’s not surprising if you haven’t heard of several of them.)
Crypto’s turbulence comes amid broader market instability in 2026. Wall Street has experienced its own roller-coaster ride, and even precious metals have been volatile, with silver prices swinging between $71 and $115 since January 1.
What makes crypto’s ups and downs particularly noteworthy, though, is the financial stakes held by President Donald Trump’s two eldest sons. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. co-founded American Bitcoin, a publicly traded Bitcoin mining and treasury management company, in March of last year. (The stock has fallen from $7.40 per share when it began trading to $1.28 in midday trading on Monday.)
Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and 19-year-old Barron Trump are also co-founders of World Liberty Financial, a crypto company that is now generating more revenue for the family than the Trump real estate business. The Wall Street Journal calculates that the company has brought in at least $1.4 billion for the Trump family since Trump’s reelection.
The sons of Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick also operate businesses with crypto interests. A White House spokesperson told the Journal that there are no conflicts of interest, as the ventures are run independently by the politicians’ sons.
Meme coins have always been risky investments. All too often, they’re rug pulls—get-rich-quick schemes in which one entity sees significant returns, but investors are left with useless holdings. And while they might be tied to a pop culture phenomenon or a person, there’s no guarantee that there’s any formal relationship between the two.
That could be the case with the Melania meme coin. Last October, a lawsuit was filed alleging that the coin’s backers orchestrated a large-scale pump-and-dump scheme involving at least 15 cryptocurrencies, including $MELANIA. The complaint alleged that first lady Melania Trump was used as “window dressing for a crime engineered by Meteora and Kelsier.”
“Neither Melania Trump nor her representatives knew the project was part of a systemic fraud, and they would not have agreed to any use of her name had they known the truth,” the suit read.
