President Donald Trump launched his own cryptocurrency on Jan. 17, just a few days before the fascist leader took office for a second time. And while the memecoin, known as $TRUMP, is clearly a way for the president to profit from the presidency, it didn’t have much utility for actually buying things… until now.
Yes, anyone holding $TRUMP can now buy a wide range of absolutely idiotic products, including Trump sneakers and Trump perfume. Unfortunately for fans of MAGA-style christo-fascism, it doesn’t appear that Trump’s “God Bless the USA” bibles are available for purchase using Trump’s crypto. You can, however, use ShopPay to buy the bible in installments, which may be necessary given its hefty $60 price tag.
As the website GetTrumpFragrances.com notes at checkout, users who want to use $TRUMP to make their purchase need to select Solana Pay at checkout, since the Trump coin was built on the Solana blockchain.
Bloomberg points out in a new article that the travel site Travala is even accepting $TRUMP, though it also accepts over 100 other types of cryptocurrency.
“You can now book hotels, flights, and fun activities around the world and pay with $TRUMP Who’s ready to travel like a boss with @realDonaldTrump?” Travala said in a tweet from Jan. 21.
That’s certainly a choice. But there is one potential hurdle for those who want to use their TRUMP crypto to buy Trump products: Actually getting the crypto out of the exchange. When Trump promoted his crypto on social media sites like Truth Social (another thing he happens to own and profit from), he drove people to the website Moonshot to make their purchases.
The problem with Moonshot is that there’s no way for people who bought the crypto there to actually move the crypto out to an independent crypto wallet which would allow them to buy things. The Moonshot ecosystem allows you to send crypto between users, but there’s no way to transfer that crypto out to buy Trump sneakers, Trump watches, or anything else the president may offer up for sale.
Anyone who purchased their $TRUMP crypto from other exchanges can make their purchases. But Gizmodo has yet to figure out a way to make a payment outside of Moonshot, according to its terms of service, let alone move the TRUMP crypto out of Moonshot without just cashing out.
As Bloomberg reports, the $TRUMP cryptocurrency has generated at least $11.4 million in fees alone since the coin was launched, though the value being extracted by speculators is likely so much higher.
Many news outlets refer to Trump’s crypto as a “meme coin” though that seems to almost downplay the seriousness of what’s happening here with the president’s financial experiment. Trump’s companies CIC Digital and Fight Fight Fight LLC control 80% of the crypto, an immediate red flag for anyone who knows anything about how wealth is extracted from suckers in the world of crypto.
None of that will stop die-hard believers in Trump’s crypto from investing, especially as he works to dismantle U.S. society with a string of actions in the past week that will harm everyday Americans.
$TRUMP hit an all-time high of $75.35 on Jan. 21, according to CoinMarketCap, but has plummeted ever since, currently sitting at about $27.