SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
President-elect Donald Trump is getting ready for his second inauguration tomorrow in a lot of different ways. You've probably heard about his victory rally today here in Washington, D.C., but here's one you might have missed. On Friday night, Trump launched his own official meme coin. It's a kind of cryptocurrency. And after the launch, its value has soared and soared, generating billions of dollars out of essentially thin air. Brady Dale covers crypto markets for Axios and joins us now. Welcome to the show.
BRADY DALE: Hey. Thanks for having me.
DETROW: Let's start out with the real basics because this is a booming industry. There's so much activity here, but it still confuses a lot of people. Can you just walk us through what exactly a meme coin is, how it differs from basic cryptocurrency?
DALE: Sure. A meme coin is a coin that's just meant to represent an idea. So, you know, folks often like to say that there's nothing undergirding cryptocurrency, and, you know, that's a debatable point. But with meme coins, it really is just, like, this is your way to buy into a concept. So, like, the most famous one is Dogecoin, and the idea there is just we like that doge meme. And if you have this coin, then you're sort of backing that concept. And, you know, meme coins kind of really came into their own last year. They were a fun way to sort of track how the candidates were doing 'cause there was a multiple meme coins - unofficial meme coins for every one of them. And so you could really see that, like, when certain events happened, it would be reflected in the market. And that sort of began to give a lot of people the idea, like, oh, meme coins really can follow the news.
DETROW: So is this - should we think of it as, like, a fandom thing, or I'm sure there's also people trying to buy and bank on this and trade on this, too, right?
DALE: I think there's a lot of reasons why people are buying this. I think those are correct. You know, I think folks expect that this coin will end up tracking the Trump presidency. So if he has great moments, it should go up in value. If it has bad moments, they might think that's a good time to buy. If he talks about it, that's something I'm really watching. If he talks about his coin in some official capacity, that will probably cause some kind of spike. You know, who knows how big? But another thing to keep in mind, which I think is maybe the most powerful part of this story, is celebrities who have launched meme coins in the past have often used them as a way of giving access to their biggest fans. We've already seen Trump do a version of this. You know, when he sort of announced that he liked crypto for the first time last year, it was a gathering of people who had his NFT trading cards. And so it's really a way to give his base a financial incentive to stick with him and possibly to hold the closest ones closer to him.
DETROW: So what are your biggest questions going forward with not only this particular meme coin, but this broader trend that it's a big part of?
DALE: My biggest question with this particular meme coin is, does Trump actually promote it himself, you know, from his official capacity as a president? - because that will be very powerful for holders of the coin and something that people will want to trade around. And then my other big question is, you know, if at some point there isn't a congressional response to this, if there aren't, like, you know, new rules specifically about the kind of things that politicians can do, because I - it's so surprising and kind of unbelievable. I think it's something that lawmakers are going to need to grapple with going forward.
DETROW: Right, because there were so many examples the first time he was president of Trump going around ethical standards in terms of, you know, personally making money. Here he is the second time around, suddenly billions of dollars appearing with something like this that's so new that there aren't that many regulations in place.
DALE: And this is - like, it's one thing to, like, buy a bunch of hotel rooms, but you can only do that every so often. You can buy in and out of this every single day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You know, if you got a meeting with Trump or someone in his circle, you know, you might buy 1,000 meme coins just to walk in there and say you did it and see if that makes them smile, you know? And then if it doesn't, you can just sell it a minute later. You know, it's just - it really monetizes the attention he's able to generate in a way that we've just never seen anything like this before. It's going to be a very interesting story to watch.
DETROW: That's Brady Dale, crypto reporter for Axios. Thank you so much.
DALE: Thank you.
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