A Crypto Market Shaped by Trump

These past few days have underscored just how much impact a single individual can have on the market. On Saturday morning, Donald Trump announced via X (formerly Twitter) that he was launching his own memecoin, TRUMP. Initially, many were sceptical, questioning whether his account had been hacked. However, as the hours passed, TRUMP’s price soared. In less than 48 hours, TRUMP skyrocketed from $0.18 to a staggering $76, catapulting it into the top 15 cryptocurrencies by market cap.

Since TRUMP was launched on the Solana network, SOL reaped significant benefits. Riding the momentum of the listing, SOL surged to new all-time highs, peaking at $295—just shy of the $300 milestone.

The broader market was rallying in tandem. Bitcoin climbed above $106,000, TRUMP coin dominated headlines, and Melania Trump released her own meme coin, which quickly began trending. However, during Trump’s Victory Rally speech, the markets took an unexpected turn. Bitcoin fell back under $100,000, TRUMP dropped sharply from $76 to $30, and Solana faced significant congestion issues.

SOL’s price fell to $247 amid a wave of major on-chain sell-offs into liquidity pools. At one point, the price of SOL on-chain dropped as low as $200—well below its market rate—prompting arbitrage bots to exploit the gap. They snapped up discounted SOL on-chain and sold it on centralised exchanges, where prices remained closer to $250. This spike in on-chain activity caused severe congestion, with Solana withdrawals taking up to an hour to process, compared to the usual few minutes. Phantom wallet users also faced disruptions, with over 8 million requests per minute leading to widespread transaction failures.

Donald Trump is now less than 24 hours away from being sworn in for his second term as President of the United States. His influence on the crypto markets has been on full display over the past few days, and it seems likely to persist throughout his presidency. Some analysts speculate that the absence of cryptocurrency mentions during his Victory Rally speech contributed to Bitcoin’s decline. While this remains conjecture, the theory holds some merit. Many in the crypto space are eagerly anticipating a pro-crypto executive order on his first day in office. However, should these expectations fall short, Bitcoin and the wider market may face a pullback, potentially retesting recent lows of $90,000.

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