Trump coin leads tumble in meme cryptocurrencies as tariffs rock global markets
Meme coins plummeted over the weekend as President Donald Trump signed new tariffs, kicking off a trade war that caused investors to dump risk assets.
Trump's own meme coin, dubbed Official Trump, launched a little over two weeks ago, was last down 15% to $17, according to CoinGecko. It rallied to a high of about $73 dollars the weekend of its launch before crashing 50% on inauguration day.
The biggest and most popular meme coins, dogecoin and Shiba Inu, lost about 14% each. Pudgy Penguins was down 13%, while dogwifhat tumbled 26%.
Meme coins as a group have dropped 17% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.
The drop began Saturday evening after Trump signed an order imposing 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada, as well as a 10% duty on China. The U.S. does about $1.6 trillion in business with the three countries.
"Every coin that recently rallied through January, including memes like [dogecoin], have essentially handed back most of their gains," said James Davies, CEO and co-founder at trading platform Crypto Valley Exchange.
"Crypto is fundamentally about freedom to make and conduct trades, which runs counter to the global political narrative of the last week," he added. "As a community, we are pro free-trade … when that is being restricted many investors are risk-off in terms of their holdings. This massively impacts the alt coin market."