Now that there’s both Official Trump (with the ticker TRUMP) and Official Melania Meme (with the ticker MELANIA) meme coins, both of which were launched recently on the Solana blockchain, people might be wondering which of the pair is the better bet.
Spoiler alert: If you’re looking to make money investing in cryptocurrency, you’d be better off looking into assets with utility rather than ones like these that will move up or down based on unmeasurable and unpredictable things, like the popularity of the name attached to it.
Do either of these coins have staying power?
As I write this, the president’s meme coin has a market cap of $5 billion, whereas the first lady’s coin has a market cap of around $341 million. Both have lost a significant amount of their value since their launch. TRUMP’s peak was at around $15 billion, whereas MELANIA’s was at just over $2 billion. Very sharp drawdowns immediately after the launch period are a common occurrence for meme coins, so neither coin has much of an edge here.
But what about an investment thesis for each?
The idea is that as a result of the president’s and first lady’s abilities to consistently draw a significant amount of attention, some of their supporters will be inclined to invest in their coins such that the price rises. There is absolutely no guarantee that one of the individuals getting more attention will make their meme coin rise at all, but it’s the closest proxy for upside potential that there is with this asset class for the moment.
The most intense period for these coins will likely be within the president’s four-year term, as that’s when the spotlight will shine on the pair the most. Thus, in theory it may be possible to buy these coins and hold them for the medium term without fear of running out of potential catalyst events in the form of actions by the coins’ namesakes.
There’s also the chance that at least Donald Trump’s coin will be included in an exchange-traded fund (ETF) eventually, though it’s fully possible that Melania Trump’s will too. If they get approved by regulators, those ETFs would grant the coins more exposure to flows of money from the traditional financial markets, which could be a driver of higher prices.
But that doesn’t mean that the catalysts these two coins are exposed to will be of equal strength or frequency overall. The president will probably be a more consistent attention-grabber than the first lady. So, on the basis of the attention factor alone, TRUMP is the more favorable meme coin pick in this matchup — but that’s not the end of the story.
Make the wiser decision
Neither of these meme coins is investment-grade. That means you should not buy either of them, even if it’s true that Donald Trump’s coin is better positioned for success than Melania Trump’s.
There’s more than one reason to avoid these meme coins. Aside from the incredibly capricious nature of meme coins generally, adding in the possibility of exposure to political risk makes the investments all the riskier, pushing them from the realm of speculation into outright gambling. It doesn’t particularly matter that they’re officially endorsed by the powerful individuals in question.
If you’re still really tempted to make a growth-oriented investment somewhere in cryptocurrency, simply buying Solana is by far the wiser choice right now. For now, any investors who want to speculate on these two meme coins will need to purchase some Solana first, and the pair are far from the only popular meme coins on the chain.
Furthermore, five years from now, the Trump presidency will be over, and the end of that spotlight could spell the end for these tokens, but it won’t spell the end for Solana whatsoever, as the chain will probably still be in active development. People will likely still be launching non-fungible tokens (NFTs), speculating on meme coins, and launching decentralized finance (DeFi) businesses.
So don’t throw your money away; invest it where there’s at least a chance of long-term survival.
