President-elect Donald Trump launched an official TRUMP meme coin on Solana late Friday, attracting billions of dollars' worth of trading volume as the coin vaulted into the top 40 cryptocurrencies by market cap. Other major memes are falling in value as traders switch from ape to TRUMP.
Dogecoin rose, for example to its highest price in over a month, above $0.43 Friday night, just before TRUMP’s news became widespread. It dropped quickly to $0.397, as sales likely drove the price down.
DOGE has fallen 8% since the late-Friday peak and by 3% in the past 24 hours. But it's still up 18% on the week thanks to sizable gains in recent days.
Shiba Inu and Pepe are two other memes that appear to have been affected by the TRUMP token’s popularity on Friday. SHIB now has a 6% drop on the day. Pepe also is 5% down.
Not all memes are doing as poorly, though. Bonk (BONK), and SPX6900(SPX), two prominent Solana meme coins have only seen modest drops since Friday and are still substantially higher over the last day.
Fartcoin is experiencing explosive growth, as the Solana coin reached a record-breaking price of $1.75 early Saturday morning. Over the past week, its price has nearly doubled.
Solana appears to be the key connective tissue here as the network that Trump's team chose for the TRUMP token. Solana itself has jumped by 10% over the past 24 hours, making it the biggest gainer in the top 10 cryptocurrencies during that span, and rose as high as nearly $244—the highest price seen since November.
Additionally, the tokens of leading Solana decentralized exchanges are booming thanks to the TRUMP demand, with Jupiter's JUP token up 20% on the day and Raydium's RAY rising 19%.
TRUMP’s price is now around $21, after almost reaching $24 on Saturday. The Solana token now has a market cap above $4 billion, making it the 38th most valuable coin on the market, with CoinGecko reporting some $6.8 billion worth of trading volume since Friday night's launch.