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

Yes, you read that right. Running on the Solana network, the TRUMP token already has a market cap of over $8 billion, putting it among the 30 most valuable coins on the market. The move signaled the incoming President’s growing enthusiasm for the digital asset space after campaigning to help Bitcoiners and the fast-moving sphere as a whole.

Trump branded himself as a crypto-friendly candidate ahead of November’s divisive election, bringing in millions of dollars in cash and digital asset donations from Silicon Valley tech leaders. And then he won.

But it wasn’t always like this: President Trump was once a staunch crypto critic. So how did we get here?

Trump’s most defining early comment on cryptocurrency dates back to 2019, when as president he made it clear he didn’t like Bitcoin. 

“I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air,” he said on Twitter at the time, before slamming Facebook’s plans for a digital currency. 

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

Trump reiterated his beliefs during a Bitcoin bull run in 2021. “Bitcoin just seems like a scam,” he said on Fox Business, repeating that he wanted the dollar to be the world’s top currency.

Entering the NFT world

It took a long time for him to explicitly say he liked the top cryptocurrency, and the journey started with an unlikely crypto craze: NFT collectibles. 

By the end of 2021, after Trump had left the White House, his wife Melania announced her plans for a Solana-based NFT collection. 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 collection. Minted on Ethereum scaling network Polygon, the digital trading card collection was at first ridiculed—but it still sold out 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 Squawk Box. “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 (Decrypt’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.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

Editor’s note: This story was originally published on July 19, 2024 and last updated with new info on January 20, 2025.