The wife of United States President-elect, Melania Trump has launched a cryptocurrency on the eve of her husband’s inauguration as US president.
The announcement came after President-elect Donald Trump launched the $Trump cryptocurrency.
Both coins have currently risen but have experienced volatile trade.
“The Official Melania Meme is live! You can buy $MELANIA now,” she posted on the social platform X on Sunday.
The website for the “Official Melania Meme” said it is a crypto asset created and tracked on the Solana blockchain.
Disclaimers on the websites of both the $Trump and $Melania coins said they were “not intended to be, or the subject of” an investment opportunity or a security.
According to the CoinMarketCap website, $Trump has a total market valuation of about $12bn (£9.8bn), while $Melania’s stands at around $1.7bn.
Trump had previously called crypto a “scam” but during the 2024 election campaign became the first presidential candidate to accept digital assets as donations, BBC reports.
On the campaign trail, Trump also said he would create a strategic bitcoin stockpile and appoint financial regulators that take a more positive stance towards digital assets. That spurred expectations that he would strip back regulations on the crypto industry.
In the wake of Trump’s victory, bitcoin jumped to a record high and is currently trading at around $107,000, according to crypto trading platform Coinbase.
